Ice at the North Pole in 1958 and 1959 – not so thick

What would NSIDC and our media make of a photo like this if released by the NAVY today? Would we see headlines like “NORTH POLE NOW OPEN WATER”? Or maybe “Global warming melts North Pole”? Perhaps we would. sensationalism is all the rage these days. If it melts it makes headlines.

Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959. Image from NAVSOURCE

Some additional captures from the newsreel below show that the ice was pretty thin then, thin enough to assign deckhands to chip it off after surfacing.The newsreel is interesting, here is the transcript.

USS Skate heads north on another epic cruise into the strange underseas realm first opened up by our nuclear submarines. Last year, the Skate and her sister-sub Nautilus both cruised under the Arctic ice to the Pole. Then, conditions were most favorable. The Skate’s job is to see if it can be done when the Arctic winter is at its worst, with high winds pushing the floes into motion and the ice as thick as twenty-five feet.

Ten times she is able to surface. Once, at the North Pole, where crewmen performed a mission of sentiment, scattering the ashes of polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins. In 1931, he was the first to attempt a submarine cruise to the Pole. Now, the Skate’s twelve-day three thousand mile voyage under the ice, shown in Defense Department films, demonstrates that missile-carrying nuclear subs could lurk under the Polar Ice Cap, safe from attack, to emerge at will, and fire off H-bomb missiles to any target on Earth.

For example, one crew member aboard the USS Skate which surfaced at the North Pole in 1959 and numerous other locations during Arctic cruises in 1958 and 1959 said:

“the Skate found open water both in the summer and following winter. We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick. The ice moves from Alaska to Iceland and the wind and tides causes open water as the ice breaks up. The Ice at the polar ice cap is an average of 6-8 feet thick, but with the wind and tides the ice will crack and open into large polynyas (areas of open water), these areas will refreeze over with thin ice. We had sonar equipment that would find these open or thin areas to come up through, thus limiting any damage to the submarine. The ice would also close in and cover these areas crushing together making large ice ridges both above and below the water. We came up through a very large opening in 1958 that was 1/2 mile long and 200 yards wide. The wind came up and closed the opening within 2 hours. On both trips we were able to find open water. We were not able to surface through ice thicker than 3 feet.”

Whatever happened to the days when we were treated to new vistas minus the agenda?
Subs at the North Pole (wasn’t so bad, was it?), Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Pioneer, Voyager.
When Science delivered without the attendant sermon.
What happened?
If it weren’t for the Rovers operating on Mars, we’d be S.O.L., and right now, Sol is out to lunch. So appears to be Earth Science.
Sure do miss NASA and JPL.

I know! He’ll say the skeptics made it all up. These were photoshopped or even shot in a Hollywood Special Effects studio. That’s how he’ll do it.

Everybody knows that the North Pole has never melted ever before. Everybody knows that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole in a big castle filled with merry little elves.

And Catlin is getting ready for their third resupply flight. Now according to their website, there were only three resupplies planned. 43 days and 540+ km to the pole? I don’t think so. Not unless they’ve had a change of plan in the number of resupplies.

Well, it just goes to show how much warming human activity has caused. Where are the pictures of submarines at the north pole before the industrial revolution? Eh? Where are they? There are none. Not a single one. My case is proved.

Only since mankind has pursued its wicked desires for warm homes, clean water and plentiful food have submarines been able to surface at the north pole.

And just look at the dates of these pictures – 1958, 1959, 1962, 1987, 1993 and 1999. More than 200 years of savage attack on mother nature’s fridge had already occurred, it’s hardly surprising the ice was thin enough for these dreadful machines to wreak their havoc.

And what about the damage they did to the fragile, naturally balanced ice sheets as the submarines (designed, you might note in a distinctly phallic shape) thrust upwards and breached the delicate hymen that was all between natures virtue and man’s disgusting lusts? How long do you think it took for the broken ice to heal from this savage act of macho oppression?

All the efforts of those who really care about mother nature have been dedicated to trying to ease her pain yet nothing, nothing I say again, can restore the wounds created by such brutal aggression to the intimate soul of her being.

You seek to make a cheap point about the thickness of the ice having been less in the past than it is now? How dare you? What an affront to those who have dedicated their lives to profiting from carbon credits, ahem, sorry, I meant protecting mother nature’s virtue.

Robert Bateman — Looks like 1st year ice those subs were breaking through.

Although on the surface the claim that multi-year ice is thicker sounds logical, is this really true? What seems logical may not be, e.g. thinking the earth must be closer to the sun is when we get summer sounds logical yet isn’t true. One would think that ice compacts and thickness in any area is as much a factor of local currents (or lack thereof) and such as much as anything else.

I know! He’ll say the skeptics made it all up. These were photoshopped or even shot in a Hollywood Special Effects studio. That’s how he’ll do it.

No way he can wriggle his way out of that one.
Those pictures, I remember seeing them in Time or Life magazine 50 years ago. They may even have made the Huntley-Brinkley report, or a Walter Cronkite blurb.
I remember when it happened.
Billboard it. Spread it all over the place.
Front page it.
Bumper sticker it.
Run it all over the Internet.
Make buttons for it.
Make a moniker out of it:
Remember the Skate.
Make Al Gore eat it.

The biggest problem I have with all the modelers is that they ignore the empirical evidence that is right there in historical records, be they written records of wheat and flax shipments from Greenland to Europe during the Medieval Warm Period or photographic evidence of surfacing subs and earlier Arctic Explorations.

All their proxies and calculated anomalies might give them a metric to plug into a model, but ignoring the written and photographic records of people who “were there” demonstrates the modeler’s all-consuming arrogance…and ignorance.

It was only a few weeks ago that I listened to a friend of mine talk about being on a boat when it surfaced through the ice relatively close to the pole. That would have been in the mid to late 70s. He was on a fast attack sub. I was on a boomer (missile sub). Though we crossed the Arctic Circle, we never went under the ice while I was on board, to my knowledge.

Isn’t there a record of a Chinese fleet finding the Arctic relatively ice free around 1276? Curse those medieval SUV’s!

You are referring to Gavin Menzies’ book “1421: The Year China Discovered America”. There are no actual records of a Chinese expedition to the pole, but Menzies makes an interesting circumstantial case for it. Unfortunately, a lot of the evidence he presents was also used by Erich von Daniken in “Chariots of the Gods”. Oddly enough, the evidence exists…. it just doesn’t speak for itself.

I was always a global warming sceptic,because of the poem that I was taught in school.I am not a poetry person,but this one struck a chord,and should be taught to every Australian child.It was written in 1906 by Dorothea MacKellar
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded Lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens,
Is running in your veins;
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies –
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains,
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me.

The tragic ring-barked forests
Stark white beneath the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
An orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the crimson soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart around us
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold;
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown Country
My homing thoughts will fly.

It’s a poem that could be written today,and any time in the next 100 years.Nothing’s changed.

And no run away positive feedbacks or worldwide flooding occurred each time the ice was that thin.

(eye twitching uncontrollably) Of course not, the positive feedbacks are due to Man Made Emissions of CO2!!!. Dang it!!! And since CO2 had not yet peaked to the alarming levels that it has reached today, the positive feedbacks had not yet kicked in.

The ice melt back then was due to Man Made Emissions of CO2 that occurred prior to 1958 – haven’t you heard of the Industrial Revolution.

Now don’t go on about the arctic freezing up between 1958 and 2000 – that’s just weather and the CO2 warming was stuck in the pipeline just waiting to boil out – like it is now….

The level to which you ignore basic facts is becoming more and more obvious as James Hester, crew member mentions (polynyas) and as Hester also mentions they were using sonar to find these areas. The Arctic (as I hope you know) is just floating ice, on average only a few meters thick, these areas can form even at the pole
Polynyas are a phenomenon known for quite a long period of time, they are areas of open water that form (sometimes briefly) (sometimes in the same spot) they occur in both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.
While I realize you are cherry picking this to support [snip], but as proof for that cause this is worth nothing.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynyas

On the recent blog on Dr Serreze you had a couple of critical posts from someone you referred to as birdman. When I was allowed to post on RealClimate (sadly I’m now banned for disagreeing) Bird Man gave me a roasting. It is very pleasing to see that you don’t ban and don’t roast this guy. But will he post on this blog as his post quoted Dr Seereze as saying

“There is this thin first-year ice even at the North Pole at the moment,” says Serreze. “This raises the spectre – the possibility that you could become ice free at the North Pole this year.”

I do so very much hope Bird MAn returns to make a comment on the ice free North Pole of some 50 years ago. However, I doubt he will.

“Whatever happened to the days when we were treated to new vistas minus the agenda?”

Read Eisenhowers last speech of 1961. Government became the leading funder of science. It’s that simple. And those who influence government with campaign contributions also provide endowments to Universities, so have say on what gets taught and researched.

It seems first year ice to me, and Mr. Serezze at NSIDC have said it: it is much more vulnerable and is expected to disappear in the summer melt season…

Last year our friends at NSIDC said that the percentage of multi year ice in the Arctic reached a record low level, and this will lead to an ice-free North Pole in the summer of 2008. Of course they were wrong, but their obvious failure was completely ignored by the mainstream media. This year, they are trying to scare us with a record low level of first and second year ice. They don’t even mention the fast recovery of Arctic sea ice extent to near-normal levels. Let I guess, next year they will come out with an unprecedented low level of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year ice.

Why do they put the Arctic sea ice anomaly chart to their main page for advocating purposes and try to hide the constantly above normal Antarctic ice from the public? If you are at the first time on their website, your chances to find any information from the current situation of Antarctic sea ice is not significantly different from zero. All in all, the NSIDC is lightyears away from the Neutral Point Of View.

That photo wasn’t “released by the NAVY today” – I have had it on my Arctic regional summary page for months:

The whole world saw those pictures the years they were taken.
It was a feat at the time. Neato. Boss. Swell. Gosh.
Little did we know how important they would turn out to be.
Somebody deliver them to Congress with a TV camera & a microphone.
Let’s see what expletives the world will now attach to them.
Run it front page on the NY Times.
Hand them to George Will, Charles Gibson, Katie Couric, Martha Radich.
What about it, Gore?

Don’t forget the magnetic North Pole moves (and quite fast.) Do we mean geographic or Magnetic?

Piece of cake. Just dig up the original story that hit the TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. US bragging rights, and right up there with the space race and all the other FIRSTS of the time. We did stuff, and oh how we let the world know how advanced we were.

Let’s see, err……..I know, these weren’t actually taken at the north pole but many miles further south & was a publicity stunt! (I’ll think of some dumb reason for a stunt in a while)…errr……….the submarines all fired torpedos into the ice to break it up…. then used the uranium from their reactors to melt the remainder of the ice & scare away the polar bears that’s why you can’t see any! The three captains & their crews all lied about it, every one of them, as part of a cold war conspiracy to blame the Russians for melting it! errr……they aren’t real pictures but merely simulations on a laptop by those co-conspiritors all working for dirty oil Christopher Monckton, Richard Courtney, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, Piers Corbyn, Stephen Wilde, et al especially all those at WUWT & anyone who went to the ICCC in March 09! errrr………….aliens melted the ice back in the 1950’s, & again in the 1980’s, no, no ,no that’s far too silly. Oh I know, a giant asteroid was on a collision course (yet again) with earth, these three intrepid submarine commanders were on a top secret mission to launch special surface-to-asteroid missiles that would deflect it away from civilisation, & they managed to knock it into the north pole, & they went there to make sure it was all gone & it had! Yes that’s the best one I think, far more plausible! What do you think Al Gorey? Got any better suggestions that you could use during your next bout of Senate testimoney? (I should be a screen writer – not!) BTW can I see three figures in the background pulling sledges in one area, a canoe in another, & a sailing boat on the horizon, all bearing union jacks? Hee hee!

Seriously though, can I just copy these pictures without too much difficulty because I really would like to show them to one or two idoits I know?

Just wanted to say how much I miss John Daly. His was the very first website I read on global warming after I converted from a believer. The sceptic cause lost a huge man when he died. Imagine the beating he’d be giving the warming-worriers today! I hope the relatives of Mr Daly appreciate how much we miss him.

Apologies for repeating a very relevant post I made several months ago. It illustrates that ‘history’ quickly becomes forgotten and that if the authorities make a detemined enough effort inconvenient history can be effectively erased.

” Claims of unprecedented warmth and abnormal melting of meltic arctic ice are unfounded if we look at history;

2 This relates to an Arctic culture thriving in warmer times 2000 years ago
From the Eskimo Times Monday, Mar. 17, 1941

The corner of Alaska nearest Siberia was probably man’s first threshold to the Western Hemisphere. So for years archeologists have dug there for a clue to America’s prehistoric past. Until last year, all the finds were obviously Eskimo. Then Anthropologists Froelich G. Rainey of the University of Alaska and two collaborators struck the remains of a town, of inciedible size and mysterious culture. Last week in Natural History Professor Rainey, still somewhat amazed, described this lost Arctic city.

It lies at Ipiutak on Point Hope, a bleak sandspit in the Arctic Ocean, where no trees and little grass survive endless gales at 30° below zero. But where houses lay more than 2,000 years ago, underlying refuse makes grass and moss grow greener. The scientists could easily discern traces of long avenues and hundreds of dwelling sites. A mile long, a quarter-mile wide, this ruined city was perhaps as big as any in Alaska today (biggest: Juneau, pop. 5,700).

On the Arctic coast today an Eskimo village of even 250 folk can catch scarcely enough seals, whales, caribou to live on. What these ancient Alaskans ate is all the more puzzling because they seem to have lacked such Arctic weapons as the Eskimo harpoon.

Yet they had enough leisure to make many purely artistic objects, some of no recognizable use. Their carvings are vaguely akin to Eskimo work but so sophisticated and elaborate as to indicate a relation with some centre of advanced culture — perhaps Japan or southern Siberia —certainly older than the Aztec or Mayan.

4 This refers to the Vikings living in a warmer arctic culture 1000 years ago
People might be interested in reading a very interesting book about the Vikings called ‘The Viking world’. It is a very scholarly and highly referenced book running to some 700 pages and deals with all aspects of the Vikings. It is good because it does not have an axe to grind, but deals matter of factly with all aspects of Viking culture and exploration.
There is a large section on their initial exploration of Greenland, the subsequent establishment of their farms there, everyday life, how they gradually lost access to the outside world as the sea lanes closed through ice, a record of the last wedding held In Greenland and how trade dried up. It also deals with Vinland/Newfoundland and it seems that it was wild grapes that helped give the area its name, it being somewhat warmer than today.
This is one of a number of similar books that record our warmer and cooler past throughout the Northern Hermisphere. Al Gore wrote a good book in 1992 called ‘Earth in the Balance’ in which he explored the changing climate that devastated the civilisations in the Southern Hemishpere.
The book ‘The Viking World’ is Edited by Stefan Brink with Neil Price Published by Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 33315-3
I suggest you borrow it from the local library as it costs $250!

5 This refers to a warmer arctic 75 years ago recorded on Pathe newsreel by Bob Bartlett on the Morrisey during his journeys there in the 1920’s and 1930’s and reported in all the media.

Wednesday, 10th August 1932
The ship rolled heavily all night and continues to do so….
The glacier continues its disturbances. No real bergs break off but great sheets of ice slide down into the water and cause heavy seas. About noon, the entire face of the glacier, almost a mile in length and six or eight feet deep slid off with a roar and a rumble that must have been heard at some distance. We were on deck at the time for a preliminary report like a pistol shot had warned us what was coming. The Morrissey rolled until her boats at the davits almost scooped up the water and everything on board that was not firmly anchored in place crashed loose. But this was nothing to the pandemonium on shore. I watched it all through the glasses. The water receded leaving yards of beach bare and then returned with a terrific rush, bringing great chunks of ice with it. Up the beach it raced further and further, with the Eskimos fleeing before it. It covered all the carefully cherished piles of walrus meat, flowed across two of the tents with their contents, put out the fire over which the noonday meal for the sled drivers was being prepared, and stopped a matter of inches before it reached the pile of cement waiting to be taken up the mountain. Fortunately, in spite of heavy sea, which was running, the Captain had managed to be set shore this morning so he was there with them to help straighten out things and calm them down.”

The arctic has periodically warmed to greater amounts than today-there is adiutional data from the Rpyal society, The Hudson Bay co and many other souyrces illustrating that there seems to be a cycle of extensive warming every 80 years or so contauined within a longher cycle of melt and cold. A tiny reduction in ice extent since 1979 ( A high point in ice levels) is of no consequence if you look at the historical record of this region

Al Gore and the North Pole. Interesting that Al Gore only allowed partial release of Arctic datas since he became Vice Presitent, although he had visited the North Pole already 1990, and has said in his book back in 1992 “that the polar cap plays such a crucial role in the world’s weather system”, (see: a recent comment ; ca. 23 April; Monkton – Al Gore):
“We were crashing through that ice, surfacing, and I was standing in an eerily beautiful snowscape, windswept, and sparkling white, with the horizon defined by little hummocks, or ‘pressure ridges’ of ice that are pushed up like tiny mountains ranges when separate sheets collide. But here too, CO2 levels are rising just as rapidly, …As the polar air warms, the ice here will thin; and since the polar cap plays such a crucial role in the world’s weather system, the consequences of a thinning cap could be disastrous. ” More at: http://www.oceanclimate.de/, referring to Al Gores North Pole visit (Gore, Al (Albert), (1992); “The Earth in Balance”, London, 1992.)
A very impressive and far sighted work by the late John Daly.

“Ice at the North Pole in 1958 and 1959 – not so thick?” lol – should be “Polynyas exist then as they do now”

“The Ice at the polar ice cap is an average of 6-8 feet thick, but with the wind and tides the ice will crack and open into large polynyas (areas of open water), these areas will refreeze over with thin ice. We had sonar equipment that would find these open or thin areas to come up through”

“Results from Rothrock et al. (1999) shows changes in ice thickness comparing submarine results from the 1958 through 1976 to results from the 1990’s. The results show that there was thinning at every point of comparison. The thinning averaged 40%, representing a decrease from about 3 m to less than 2 m (see figure below).”

@vukcevic
Many thanks for that link.
Once before I almost fell off my chair when reading a climate change article – this was when I first heard about the opinion polls that show pretty conclusively that the majority of ordinary people believe the warming is mostly natural.
Once again I almost fell off my chair while reading this report – ok, a slight exaggeration!
The Independent is one of the major UK national newspapers and as far as I know is completely pro-AGW. This news report is almost perfectly balanced and actually questions AGW in the light of past historical knowledge of solar activity and climate. The report also passes what I could call the Solar Activity Test.
I have seen a number of documentaries and articles that discuss a possible cooling due to falling solar activity – I think one documentary was entitled ‘Saved by the Sun?’
But I noticed an extraordinary thing: not one of these mentioned a rather important fact, that the sun had been extraordinarily active during the 20th century. According to some scientists the sun was the most active for a few thousand years.
It’s obvious why this fact was suppressed. The spin was that the ‘disastrous’ warming was caused by CO2, but that the sun might come to our rescue by offsetting some of the warming. Of course, the other, and some might say blindingly obvious explanation is that the 20th century warming was caused by the overactive sun, and that now the sun has calmed down the world will start to cool. But of course that wouldn’t do, would it? If true then it means that CO2 has an insignificant role to play in climate change.
This article does state that solar activity was high in the 20th century, so it passes the test with flying colours.
I know it may be wishful thinking, but I do get the sense that the tide is slowly turning in favour of the truth. And this article in a major UK newspaper is just one more sign of this.
Chris

Subs at the north pole does not really mean much as the quote from James Hester shows, they picked thin or ice-free if possible areas to surface at. It does show the action of the ice and that ice-free areas are not unusual in the arctic.

Non-icebreakers forcing the Northwest passage are much more telling because that can only be done when there is a significant decrease in ice over large areas. Of course that has been done a few times over the last 100 years. Question did any non-icebreakers make it though in 2007?

Are there any newspaper types reading these posts? Is there anyone here that has a connection with a large newspaper that would publish a good article. Can we get a copy of the submarines at the pole newsreel to give to TV stations. I think the media is just about ready to take a look at this kind of stuff. Here is a chance to put together a terrific article with US Navy 1950s-60s, the British Navy 1817 etc showing global warming ranges of today as not unusual. I’m concerned as I can see there is a scurry to get expensive global warming policies in place -as they have in Europe with their cap and trade and hype. There is also a president that is “conciliatory” to the Old World malarkey and is greener than Kilarney. If they managed to pass the cap and trade stuff in North America then this cooling period would be seen as having been the result of these new policies even before a mole of CO2 had been bought and sold. Preaching to ourselves has had some spin off but I think we have to find a way to push the best stuff out there.

Come on Guys we all know that the conditions prevailing previously was weather not climate?

These weather conditions have been going on for millions of years but the underlying trend and past records of Polar bear extinction demonstrate that the climate is changing.

Are people really trying to say that numerous weather events are climate?

Using ambient moisture content readings from Scots pine and other proxies such as those I choose, I will be able to show for sure that the arctic ice being so thin in 1958, 1959 1936 and 1922 was due to CO2 emissions. In fact I don’t need to do any more research because the Hockey Stick Graph shows this warming.

On another point it is clear that the swine virus originating in Mexico is due to global warming and this is obvious.

I have tried unsuccessfully to connect with NSIDC for a few hours and they aren’t available. The blue line angling to meet or cross the average ice extent curve has been building up palpable suspense for a couple of weeks. I’m betting there is a new report coming out that will move their position cautiously away from deep global warming to tepid global warming and eventually … WUWT?

@TonyB,
Tony, I was fascinated by your reference to Ipiutak, which I had not come across before. Two references gave dates, one about 100BC, the other around the 6th century. The first date corresponds perfectly with the Roman Warm Period, the second with a significant warming that occurred between the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods (according to an ice core graph that I often refer to). According to the ice core, around the 7th century there was a cooling that was actually deeper than the LIA, and the MWP may have occurred as the climate bounced back from this sharp cooling.
Here’s an interesting link:http://explorenorth.com/articles/billjones/ipiutak.html
The writer mentions several mysteries, for example the nearest source of wood being hundreds of miles away. He was clearly assuming that the climate was the same as today’s. If the climate were indeed warmer than today’s then most if not all of those mysteries are neatly explained.
It looks as if the Ipiutak can be added to the list of civilisations/cultures that prospered when the world was warm and died out when the world was cold.
Chris

“Ice at the North Pole in 1958 and 1959 – not so thick?” lol – should be “Polynyas exist then as they do now”

ak,

The title of the article is perfect and we don’t want to make it too complicated by using difficult scientific words like “Polynyas”.

That is because we want the “Incoming Director of the NSIDC to understand the story. We all like to see Dr. Mark Serreze succeed his career.

Unfortunately, from his position as “Incoming Director of the NSIDC” made some remarks about the Arcic Sea Ice that left us with the conclusion that he was a little confused and mixed up some basic thermodynamics.
It could also be that he has mixed up the understanding of the words “warm and cold”. It happens and it is perfectly human to make a mistake.

That is why I am very pleased with this publication and I really hope Dr. Mark Serreze
gets a chance to read it.

It would be a shame if the “Incoming Director of the NSIDC would become the “Outgoing Director of the NSIDC” only because of such a miner issue of understanding.

So, just for the record Dr. Mark Serreze, if you get a chance to read this, just repeat after me:

In terms of sea ice thickness, there is data from the Canadian Ice Service of sea ice monitoring at various communities across the Arctic that goes back to 1947. This would be coastal sea ice versus north pole pack ice but here is Alert and Eureka Canada where ice thickness has been measured basically once a week since 1947. The NSIDC ice movement maps say this area has the most multi-year ice remaining so it is the anomaly now.

Some ups, some downs, maybe a little down recently but still difficult to tell.

“Just wanted to say how much I miss John Daly. His was the very first website I read on global warming after I converted from a believer. The sceptic cause lost a huge man when he died. Imagine the beating he’d be giving the warming-worriers today! I hope the relatives of Mr Daly appreciate how much we miss him.”

Amen!

For those that have not seen the John Daly info, it’s an excellent resource for Arctic infomation. Worthy of reading and bookmarking.

You can download (free!!) ScreenHunter software that will let you screen capture whatever is showing on your screen (or parts thereof). I have been using it for months with great satisfaction. (On the rare occasion that it doesn’t go to the screen that you want, right click and try again. That cancels that attempt withot a blank exposure.) You can then e-mail whatever you copy.

However, is the first photo really of the Skate surfacing at the Pole on 17 March 1959? Or is it really just a file photo, taken elsewhere on another date, of the Skate, which surfaced at the Pole on 17 March 1959?

If the photo was really taken during the last week of winter, why is there so little ice in comparison with the other photos, many of which were taken in mid-summer? According to Hester’s account, the sub had to break through 2 feet of ice to do a winter surfacing. I see the ice in other photos, but not in this one.

The Meeting of May 18th,1987 would make a great T-shirt-with say,Global Warming!
23 years before Gore? then under it the Skate, and Ok, 50 years BFG…
Just a minor weather report.Had a nice spring day in NE Oregon,went to Pasco Wa.
it was in the 60’s/well off the hot temps of last week.-Snow is in the forcast…
After I and my wife bought all these plants…

“All that is missing is an apology from the apologist here.
But has not the 30 percent decrease happened since 1979?” -Gerald Machnee

“Comparison of sea-ice draft data acquired on submarine cruises between 1993 and 1997 with similar data acquired between 1958 and 1976 indicates that the mean ice draft at the end of the melt season has decreased by about 1.3 m in most of the deep water portion of the Arctic Ocean, from 3.1 m in 1958–1976 to 1.8 m in the 1990s.” – http://psc.apl.washington.edu/thinning/Rothrock_Thinn.pdf

Since this paper provides data from the US Navy subs, not just anecdotal pictures, could it be added to the original post for all to see? The timeframe of the study is comparable to that of the original post. The anecdotal evidence of showing the subs in polynyas might mislead readers to think that all the ice in the region was of the same thickness, where in reality, these spots were specifically sought so as not to damage the subs. Thanks.

I’m convinced that most of the world, including scientists of all fields, get their conception of the North Pole from Hollywood.

Remember the film ‘Ice Station Zebra’? The ice was portrayed as several feet thick, a uniform plain of white stretching as far as the eye can see. There was no gaps or open water, no ridges, just a vast expanse of ice and snow drifts.

People believe the Arctic ice cap to be a stable mass of ice, as if it just sits there, unmoving, forever. The believe it only melts around the edges and don’t understand how the ice drifts and flows from Alaska towards Greenland and Iceland.

AGW alarmists play upon this ignorance. Scientists who know better but do not correct the misreporting of the popular media are doing no favor to their profession.

You are referring to Gavin Menzies’ book “1421: The Year China Discovered America”. There are no actual records of a Chinese expedition to the pole, but Menzies makes an interesting circumstantial case for it. Unfortunately, a lot of the evidence he presents was also used by Erich von Daniken in “Chariots of the Gods”. Oddly enough, the evidence exists…. it just doesn’t speak for itself.

I think I saw an HC show about this, where they were looking for evidence of chinese ships on the US west coast. Which is fine, except they were relying on dowsing to find them. They didn’t find anything…

Probably the best short video of a US sub breaking through the polar ice is on the Stargate SG1 straight to DVD movie, Continuum, with a special feature of how they shot the sub breaking through the ice on cue.

There IS some merit to the “cherry picking” claim by the warmists over the US subs at the North Pole, because those “Polynyas” perhaps were used in preference to more icy areas nearby. The “ice free North Pole” claim is to have vast stretches of the polar region ice free (less than 15% ?) and we’ll know that when we see it. I don’t think anyone can make the claim that vast stretches of the North Pole have been ice free yet, BUT at the same token, I don’t think that event will happen anytime soon, either.

Furthermore, we all can guess that the “ice free North Pole” is rhetoric more than it is practical, due to the angle of incidence at 90deg anyway. It would take one hell of a stormy season to push that much ice out of the polar region in order to get that much free ice area so as to really make all that much difference in the direct solar forcing of the Arctic ocean.

Something I’ve not seen as yet when reading these Arctic ice threads — We’ve all seen the animated ice graphics, of how the ice flows past the eastern coast of Greenland, out into the Atlantic Ocean. The river of ice flowing always seems the same from year to year, covering approximately the same area, but I would hazard a guess that perhaps when the Arctic is very stormy, and the ice is really pushed toward and around the east coast of Greenland, the speed (and thus area/volume) of ice physically pushed out of the Arctic is perhaps markedly different from year to year. Perhaps significantly so. Has this ever been quantified?

I fear that revisionism is alive and well today. In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston was employed by the Ministry of Truth to revise history to ensure that Big Brother’s predictions remain accurate. Today, inconvenient truths like the submarine photos, will be ignored or twisted by the AGW revisionists to ensure that current doctrine is maintained and “accurate”.

George Carlin has a message with more clarity than Algore and his acolytes. George’s language is interspersed with vulgarity but is basic common sense applied to Nature and the planet Earth.
—————————————————————
George Carlin on Global Warming

First I’d like to echo the admiration expressed for John Daly. One of the pioneer sceptics who relentlessly posed credible comon sense questions to the AGW community; many of which have yet to be answerred in kind. He is missed.

Second a question: what’s the funny little bump in the ASMR-E Sea Ice Extent graph that occurs frequently around June 1?

This is another reason why the military makes it their business to know so much more about Arctic ice than the civilian sector: Open leads and polynyas are critical strategic resources.

He who knows the whereabouts and behavior of opportunities to surface through the ice – or equivalently, to move men & equipment across the surface unimpeded – holds a decisive ‘comman and control’ advantage over the competition.

To function as a global power today (and for decades now) it is vital to know where openings are in the ice, on a near real-time, continuous basis.

It’s not just a matter of scientific interest to know how, when & where openings occur in the Arctic icecap, but a matter of security at the highest level.

It is no accident or mere indulgence, that among the first & most important missions of nuclear submarines, was to demonstrate their value in understanding how to exploit the Arctic realm. These pictures that have been released were as much for the benefit of the Soviets etc, as they were for the curious publics in America & Britain.

So, with the scarcity of ice during the times these pictures were taken, does any one know of pictures of places like the Maldives that were taken during the same times so we can see how they were affected?

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! for posting those old Navy pictures. I’m 61 years old and remember seeing some of those pictures in news magazines in the past. I have some good friends my same age who are absolutely convinced that the polar ice is melting, that the polar bears are going extinct and that Manhattan Island, the Maldives and Florida will soon be inundated. They have completely bought the media hype, and no amount of contradictory evidence can get them to change their minds. These pictures are the best visual evidence of the AGW hoax I have seen. Believe me, I will be forwarding these pictures to quite a few people.

Models are great at forecasting the past – something I learned from modeling population and energy usage. Biggest factor in modeling was the outlier, data that doesn’t fit – or in my case – when the biggest manufacturer shut down.
Seems to me that an accurate summer ice at the pole model would include temperature. Extreme cold dries out the atmosphere. As the earth is inclined about 22 degrees toward the sun, photons [fancy word for energy] striking the ice would cause it to sublimate more – sort of like evaporation – and thin the ice. The ice would thin from the top down.
Sublimation is no mystery. But it is counterintuitive to some.
When the ice ages covered the earth [relatively speaking], the most ice free zones were directly in front of the floe [sp] . The air was desiccated and vast drifts of wind blown soil built up – leaving hills hundreds of feet thick – Loess. Again – counterintuitive – but shows how a model builder using certain presumptions, can model the wrong thing. Desiccation is not a mystery.
Iceberg calving from glaciers. Hopefully every grade school student has learned that the proportion of ice below the sea’s surface is huge in an iceberg. Glacier Iceberg calving is merely the force of gravity breaking ice that is not supported enough by the strength of frozen freshwater in its bulk while flowing into saltwater that tends to melt away the bottom of the birthing berg. The modeling has to take into account snow fall versus temperatures and the specific ocean bed conditions at the glacier front. Does the modeler then confuse the long-term snowfall conditions with the formation of sea ice at the North Pole? The two are counter-intuitively not related.

ak, you must look at the dates of the submarine data. The initial measure was taken in October, and subsequent measure taken in September,etc. It will show the ice to be thinner, of course, due to seasonal variation. Most people don’t realize that an area the size of the U.S. melts and freezes every year. TonyB mentioned the Hudson’s Bay records ( they go back almost 400 years) , which indicate a cyclical variation in ice extent and thickness. These are accurate records for their lives and livelihood depended on good data. This leads me to believe that we are well within naturally occurring variations of the polar ice. We live on a planet where water can exist in all three states at any given time. With a climate that is as complex as earths ( think of all the variables), there is going to be fluctuation in ice extent, thickness, movement due to winds, water temperature, salinity. The list goes on. You have to ignore a great deal of paleoclimate evidence to say that we are “outside” this natural variation.

excuse me if this was posted already. Here is a scientific paper that compares some of the Artic warming and ice melt to what happened in the 1940’s. They say it is the same. Just mother nature and her changeable nature at work.http://rdgs.dk/djg/pdfs/106/1/04.pdf

Kath (08:17:56) : I fear that revisionism is alive and well today. . . . revise history to ensure that Big Brother’s predictions remain accurate”

James Hansen has done this. Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes yesterday introduced Hansen as “NASA’s top climate scientist, credited with the earliest and most accurate projections on climate change.”

I recall Hansen’s 1988 testimony before Congress in which he predicted a warmer climate by 1.2°C in twenty years. Here in 2009, the global average is only 0.17 to 0.22°C warmer than the 20th Century benchmark. He then had the audacity to publish a paper with himself as the lead author extolling the virtues of the accuracy of his 1988 projections. Looking back, none of his three scenarios came even within 50% of being accurate, yet the ya-hoos over at RealClimate.org insist Hansen was and is spot on.

“Canada’s geothermal database indicate that the ground heat flux has increased an average of 24 mW/m2 over the last 200years. Application of this method to the global geothermal data base allowed for a quantification of the global ground energy balance at the Earth’s surface for the past few centuries. Preliminary global ground surface temperature and surface heat
flux histories indicate that the Earth’s continents have warmed by about 0.5 K and received an additional 26 mW/m2 of energy in the last 100 years.”

Everyone appears to have dismissed the heat flux as too small. The average is small but take a look at the next link and you will see that it is quite high in certain places – particularly in the pacific where El Nino lives. Looking at the east pacific heat flux anomally (scroll down to the maps) and imagine the currents converging on the equator and gathering up this hot band into a narrow band along the equator. :

Enduder: quoting from the link: “…ANNUAL GROWTH RATE {upper case mine} of climate forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases (GHGs) slowed from a peak close to 0.05 W/m2 PER YEAR {upper case mine} year around 1980-85 to about 0.035”

It would help if everyone would read things carefully before responding.

BOSTON, Sept. 24–Two Coast Guard cutters were saluted in Boston Harbor today at the end of a successful mission to find a practical Northwest Passage–a route around the top of the North American Continent. …

The North Pole is NOT the center of the Arctic Ice Pack. The majority of the Arctic Ice Pack is on the Pacific side of the pack – typically as far south as 65° latitude. That side of the pack is protected from warm water currents by the Aleutian Islands as well as the Bering Straight.

The Atlantic approach to the Arctic Ice Pack, however, is exposed to the warm water currents of the Thermohaline Circulation. Extending north and east from the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Drift reduces ice and provides a path toward the Pole as far north as latitude 85°. Because of its proximity to the warmest edge of the ice field, ice at the North Pole is frequently thin and occasionally open.

Sorry folks, this information doesn’t contradict evidence of retreating polar sea ice or Global Warming. Perhaps you should research your subjects more thoroughly.

Guardian on the attack. All skeptics and cynics are part of a conspiracy paid for by vested interests! That’s right, all us thousands upon thousands of normal independent people are part of a misinformation campaign against…global warming????

re the Hawkbill, do you mean the position of the sun? If it were the first day of spring, it would be on the horizon, but this could be in late spring. Hard to tell the scale and exactly how high in the sky the Sun is.

David Ball, The data used from the 50’s and 60’s spans July-October. The seasonal change was taken into account. Effectively, they reduced the thickness of the old ice and today, it’s still 40-50% thinner!

You can’t disagree though, that actually looking at the data collected on these trips (beautiful photos btw) is much more illuminating than just the photos themselves!

Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

We have about five more years at the outside to do something.
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….
• Life Magazine, January 1970

At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, its only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there wont be any more crude oil. Youll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy, and hell say, `I am very sorry, there isnt any.
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson

The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Jason Calley (11:31:48) : “re the Hawkbill, do you mean the position of the sun? If it were the first day of spring, it would be on the horizon, but this could be in late spring. Hard to tell the scale and exactly how high in the sky the Sun is.”

You’re getting closer, Jason Calley. And you don’t need to know the date.

“According to the ice core, around the 7th century there was a cooling that was actually deeper than the LIA, and the MWP may have occurred as the climate bounced back from this sharp cooling.”

You may be interested in this document that relates closely to your cooling reference and includes the remarkable contemporary observation as follows;

“One huge iceberg crushed the wharf at the Acropolis, close to the tip of Constantinople’s peninsula, and another extremely large one hit the city wall, shaking it and the houses on the other side, before breaking into three large pieces; it was higher than the city walls.”

Anyway, here is a detailed extract with the link given at the end.

“On the Continent eighth-century minor annals record the severe winter in the
area from which they drew their information, Austrasia. This was the power center of the new Carolingian dynasty around the Meuse and Moselle rivers and west of the Rhine. In this region that “worst freeze” began on 14 December 763 and continued until 16 March 764.32 A generation later, the royal court still remembered the winter for its unprecedented bitter cold. About that time someone in the same or a related milieu wrote up the most detailed record, in the Chronicon Moissiacense. It observes under the year 762 that the freeze reached as far as the western provinces of the Byzantine Empire:

“A great freeze oppressed the Gauls, Illyricum and Thrace and, wasted by the freeze, many olive and fig trees withered; the sprouts of the crops withered, and in the following year, hunger oppressed these regions very severely, such that many people died from scarcity of bread.”

In response to the Frankish king’s request for news about the papal and royal
ambassadors whose return from Byzantium he had expected earlier, Pope Paul I protested that “it has assuredly not escaped you that because of the very cruel harshness of this winter season, no one is coming from those parts” with news of the envoys. In fact, the pope’s unusually specific expression of relief that the king himself, the queen, and their three children were “healthy and safe and unharmed” probably reflects the receding terrors of that extreme winter.

The special processions that King Pippin enjoined on the bishop of Mainz for God’s mercy for “the great and marvelous consolation and abundance of the fruit of the earth” after the terrible “tribulation for our sins” surely reflects the return to normalcy in 765. The economic impact on the Carolingian kingdom was serious enough to force Pippin to suspend his long-standing effort to conquer Aquitaine.

Some 2,000 kilometers to the southeast, a well-informed observer at Constantinople recorded that great and extremely bitter cold settled on the Byzantine Empire and the lands to the north, west (confirming the Chronicon Moissiacense’s statement concerning Illyricum and Thrace), and east. The north coast of the Black Sea froze solid 100 Byzantine miles out from shore (157.4 km). The ice was reported to be 30 Byzantine “cubits” deep, and people and animals could walk on it as on dry land.38 Drawing on the same lost written source, another contemporary, the patriarch of Constantinople, Nicephorus I, emphasized that it particularly affected the “hyperborean and northerly regions,” as well as the many great rivers that lay north of the Black Sea.39 Twenty cubits of snow accumulated on top of the ice, making it very difficult to discern where land stopped and sea began, and the Black Sea became unnavigable. In February the ice began to break up and
flow into the Bosporus, entirely blocking it.

Theophanes’ account recalls how, as a child, the author (or his source’s author) went out on the ice with thirty other children and played on it and that some of his pets and other animals died. It was possible to walk all over the Bosporus around Constantinople and even cross to Asia on the ice. One huge iceberg crushed the wharf at the Acropolis, close to the tip of Constantinople’s peninsula, and another extremely large one hit the city wall, shaking it and the houses on the other side, before breaking into three large pieces; it was higher than the city walls. The terrified Constantinopolitans wondered what it could possibly portend.

At 66 ppb, the spike in the GISP2 sulfate deposit on Greenland dated 767 is
the highest recorded for the eighth century (see Fig. 5) and shows that this terrible winter in Europe and western Asia was connected with a volcanic aerosol that left marked traces on Greenland.http://www.medievalacademy.org/pdf/Volcanoes.pdf

I think modern people in their air conditioned cars or centrally heated homes believe that climate is relatively constant and forget that throughout our history we continually experience extremes of heat and cold caused by entirely natural forces.

This is nowhere better illustrated than in the climate references from the Byzantine Empire 383 to 1453AD which includes considerable detail on the events described above, and provides drawings of the various irrigation systems devised to beat the droughts during warm times, and the famine that ensued during cold times. It is remarkable to think that the Holy Roman Empire can still teach modern man a thing or two-in this case that there is nothing new- climatically-under the sun.

Hey Jorge, nope, I do not think I see what you are looking at. There are a lot of little details to indicate thick ice, ie the planes down, the periscope and antennas retracted, some pressure ridges on the horizon — but I do not think those are what you are looking at. What do you see?

The GISS chart (the fig. 4 you mentioned) shows total solar forcing at .2 w/m2. That is quite a difference from your calculation. Do you know why?

There is something odd about that graph. On the left, if you look between the blue lines, you see a difference of close to 1.5 watts/m^2, yet on the left of the graph, NSIDC added the notation “Solar forcing; .20 W/M^2.”

I do not know how 1.5 W/M^2 of increased irradiance translates into .20 W/M^2 of “solar forcing.” Someone wish to elucidate?

The North pole is located over the Arctic Ocean. The sea ice is free to drift around on the wind and current. Sea ice thickness and distribution must be followed over the course of several decades before an accurate picture of climate can be deduced. Sea ice has been declining in average range and and average thickness since constant satellite monitoring began more than 2 decades ago. Politicians and interest groups can spin this anyway they like, but the facts are the facts.
BTW, the sun in the pictures in the above articles looks to be about 30 degrees above the horizon. The sun a maximum of 23 degrees above the horizon at the geographic pole on or about June 20. Perhaps the pictures were taken at lower latitudes in the Arctic and the authors of the articles just forgot to mention that.

The ignorance and short memories in the media are astounding. As another example of this, my grandfather worked to retrofit an oil tanker into an ice-breaking oil tanker to transport Alaskan oil from the North Slope before the pipeline was built. The name of the original tanker or the rechristened one was the “Manhattan”.

The story I remember him telling was that the tanker had no trouble making the passage, but the damage from the ice made the tanker uncompetitive.

Aron (11:28:18) : If we ask ourselves what bothers us more of all this global warming or climate change creed, propaganda or whatever it is, is its political agenda which could make our grand children live in a kind of Aldous Huxley´s “Brave new world” where, for example, Al Gore´s descendants would have been chosen as the more “fitted” to rule the world. Can you imagine that?
I think people like the jewish people or like those who were seggregated not so long time ago in the balkans, can help in awakening the world of the danger these ideas entail to humanity. To all those fanatics, our pledge: Live and let the people live!

“Yesterdays weather window has now firmly closed. The ice team are positioned in the path of a huge storm. Pen reported this morning that winds are picking up, and the Ops team can see that over the next 36 hours the team will experience blizzard conditions with winds of up to 40 knots and a strong possibility of heavy snowfall.

During such extreme conditions, the only course of action is to sit it out and try and get some rest whilst the storm howls outside and batters the thin walls of the tent.”

It’s not just the thin tent that is getting battered by harsh reality. Seems their AGW premise is taking a sound drubbing.

Huh? This website is almost exclusively devoted to questioning Anthropogenic Global Warming

“And as you can see in this chart, global sea ice extent has broken above its long term average”

Yeah . . . so . . . With so few data points contrary to the long term downward trend, what evidence is there that this blip is indicative of a new trend. Until a new trend is defined by more data, this is nothing more than noise.

Bob says: “BTW, the sun in the pictures in the above articles looks to be about 30 degrees above the horizon. The sun a maximum of 23 degrees above the horizon at the geographic pole on or about June 20. Perhaps the pictures were taken at lower latitudes in the Arctic and the authors of the articles just forgot to mention that.”

Certainly you are correct about the 23 degrees, and it is also possible that the photo is mis-documented. I would, however, respectfully disagree that we are able to make a good estimate of the sun’s elevation in the photo without having more information about the camera and the lens used for the picture.

storky can not understand the difference between natural climate change and the alarming but unsupported CO2 = AGW hypothesis. Nor can he understand the thirty year trend line [zero line] in global sea ice extent.

Jason Calley (12:03:43) : “Hey Jorge, nope, I do not think I see what you are looking at. There are a lot of little details to indicate thick ice, ie the planes down, the periscope and antennas retracted, some pressure ridges on the horizon — but I do not think those are what you are looking at. What do you see?”
Richard Sharpe (12:10:23) : ‘Hmmm, is that land in the background off to the left? How far from land is the NP, anyway?”

Okay, this should nail it, guys: From the sun, drop a longish perpendicular through the horizon. Construct a circle with its center on the intersection, and passing through the sun. Now look below the horizon, at the point where the circle intersects the perpendicular again. What do you see?

The reason that Gavin Schmidt lost the GW debate is because he’s short: click. He claims it is the reason the alarmists, who went into the debate well ahead, ended up losing the debate [even though the debaters were seated].

So Gavin has a Napoleon complex. Who knew? But that explains his little-man response to posters who disagree with him; he just censors them — because he finally has the power!

Off topic but how many more hours before the alarmists claim the swine flu outbreak is due to global warming?

I predict a number of made to order studies will be released before Copenhagen linking flu pandemics to global warming. You know the thinking. If emissions aren’t reduced 20% by 2020 then 50% of the population will die by 2050 from flu pandemics.

The alarmists are so predictable. There is no way they won’t try to capitalize on the fear of the year.

I am alarmed that WordPress.com seems to be associated with folks who denounce the concept of global warming. I cannot find any way to contact WordPress. I see that two anti-global warming blogs are prominently featured on the WordPress home page. What’s up with this?

@Adolfo Giurfa
If Albert Gore wrote in his book “The Earth in Balance “, almost 20 years ago, that he had been at the North Pole, we should trusr him in this respect, that indeed he had been visiting the North Pole.
Interesting what he wrote in the NYT four months before being honered with the Nobel Prize (at : http://www.1ocean-1climate.com );
Al Gore: “Moving Beyond Kyoto”, The New York Times, July 1, 2007;
“We – the human species – have arrived at a moment of decision.”
“What is at risk of being destroyed is not our planet itself, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings”.
“We – all of us – now face a universal threat. Though it is not from outside this world, it is nevertheless cosmic in scale.”
with the conclusion:
“Just in the last few months, new studies have shown that the north pole ice cap – which helps the planet cool itself – is melting nearly three times faster than the most pessimistic computer models predicted”;
Looking at what John Daly presented long ago, was Al Gore better informed then he claims he was??

Bob (12:14:44) :”BTW, the sun in the pictures in the above articles looks to be about 30 degrees above the horizon. The sun (is) a maximum of 23 degrees above the horizon at the geographic pole on or about June 20. Perhaps the pictures were taken at lower latitudes in the Arctic and the authors of the articles just forgot to mention that.”

Well, I think we can make a better estimate. The conning tower looks to me to be between 25 and 30 feet tall, and I’d guess it’s about 100 yards away from the camera. The sine of the tower’s subtended angle is about .08, so the top of the tower is 4.8°. The sun’s azimuth angle is roughly two and a half times that, or roughly 12° above the horizon. Maybe 15°, max; nowhere near 30°.

Well done on intentionally misleading your audience – you’ll fit right in beside the MSM!

The article itself shows why this is utterly misleading. Holes in the ice are perfectly natural and in this case the sub used sonar to find them. You will also note that the hole they found closed up again within two hours.

This is VERY different from the ice free pole that is being predicted.

The nearest land is usually said to be Kaffeklubben Island, off the northern coast of Greenland about 700 km (440 mi) away, though some perhaps non-permanent gravel banks lie slightly further north.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pole
1999 photo would suggest land is no more than 10-15 miles away.

Somehow that does not surprise me. Al gore and the media are counting on that. You have been conditioned to be alarmed at the slightest provocation. Try to calm down and remember that we still live in a free country. I know it’s hard to believe that there might be some people who disagree with you. Try to remember a long time ago when you heard the expression, “I may not agree with what you are saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Do you rememner that saying? Maybe you can google it…

Mike Bryant (13:42:14) : “Try to remember a long time ago when you heard the expression, ‘I may not agree with what you are saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'”

Actually, Mike, if you’ve been keeping up with current events, it goes: “I may not agree with what you are saying, but I will defend to the death the right of the media not to print a single, solitary word of it.”

A. Longiv (13:12:03), “And Claude Harvey, I think it’s been proven beyond any doubt that there is a clear correlation between the number of pirates and global warming:”

A.L.: you need to update your data. Just as the decline of pirates led to the late 20th Century warming, the recent increase in pirates off the coast of Somalia has contributed to the 21st Century cooling.

I am alarmed that WordPress.com seems to be associated with folks who denounce the concept of global warming. I cannot find any way to contact WordPress. I see that two anti-global warming blogs are prominently featured on the WordPress home page. What’s up with this?

I am alarmed that people like suziam48 are apparently interested in stifling the views of those she/he disagrees with.

Perhaps she/he will now be organizing marches in the street against WordPress, along with boycotts and other actions against someone she/he disagrees with.
You know what’s amazing? These people think they “stopped the war” in Vietnam by their marches and protests. Yep. Now they’re going to march and protest to “stop global warming”, and I promise you it will be just as effective.

Walt Stone: “I don’t think anyone can make the claim that vast stretches of the North Pole have been ice free yet…”

Less ice in Arctic ocean 6000-7000 years ago

Date: Oct 2008 Source: Science Daily
ScienceDaily — Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free.

”The climate in the northern regions has never been milder since the last Ice Age than it was about 6000-7000 years ago. We still don’t know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, but there was more open water in the area north of Greenland than there is today,” says Astrid Lyså, a geologist and researcher at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU).

Shore features

Together with her NGU colleague, Eiliv Larsen, she has worked on the north coast of Greenland with a group of scientists from the University of Copenhagen, mapping sea-level changes and studying a number of shore features. She has also collected samples of driftwood that originated from Siberia or Alaska and had these dated, and has collected shells and microfossils from shore sediments.

”The architecture of a sandy shore depends partly on whether wave activity or pack ice has influenced its formation. Beach ridges, which are generally distinct, very long, broad features running parallel to the shoreline, form when there is wave activity and occasional storms. This requires periodically open water,” Astrid Lyså explains.

Pack-ice ridges which form when drift ice is pressed onto the seashore piling up shore sediments that lie in its path, have a completely different character. They are generally shorter, narrower and more irregular in shape.

Open sea

”The beach ridges which we have had dated to about 6000-7000 years ago were shaped by wave activity,” says Astrid Lyså. They are located at the mouth of Independence Fjord in North Greenland, on an open, flat plain facing directly onto the Arctic Ocean. Today, drift ice forms a continuous cover from the land here.

Astrid Lyså says that such old beach formations require that the sea all the way to the North Pole was periodically ice free for a long time.

”This stands in sharp contrast to the present-day situation where only ridges piled up by pack ice are being formed,” she says.

However, the scientists are very careful about drawing parallels with the present-day trend in the Arctic Ocean where the cover of sea ice seems to be decreasing.

“Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,” Astrid Lyså believes.

Inuit immigration

The mapping at 82 degrees North took place in summer 2007 as part of the LongTerm project, a sub-project of the major International Polar Year project, SciencePub. The scientists also studied ruined settlements dating from the first Inuit immigration to these desolate coasts.

The first people from Alaska and Canada, called the Independence I Culture, travelled north-east as far as they could go on land as long ago as 4000-4500 years ago. The scientists have found out that drift ice had formed on the sea again in this period, which was essential for the Inuit in connection with their hunting. No beach ridges have been formed since then.

”Seals and driftwood were absolutely vital if they were to survive. They needed seals for food and clothing, and driftwood for fuel when the temperature crept towards minus 50 degrees. For us, it is inconceivable and extremely impressive,” says Eiliv Larsen, the NGU scientist and geologist.

True, most of us here agree that there has been some warming since the little ice age. Global warming and AGW are definitely not similes.

storky: Huh? This website is almost exclusively devoted to questioning Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Yes, definitely, but we also are interested in weather and related phenomena.

smokey: “And as you can see in this chart, global sea ice extent has broken above its long term average”

storky: “Yeah . . . so . . . With so few data points contrary to the long term downward trend, what evidence is there that this blip is indicative of a new trend. Until a new trend is defined by more data, this is nothing more than noise.”

Two can play at this game. Since when is 30 years of satellite data enough to declare a long term trend? Especially when anecdotal evidence hints at a cyclical nature to Arctic ice coverage. Recent trends may be “noise” but the recent trends are “noise” that flies in the faces of ice free Arctic predictions.

I don’t want to be off topic, so I hope suziam48 goes on a personal fact finding mission to the North Pole. I should also remind suzi that WordPress hosts something like 3 million blogs, so she’s got a big censorship job ahead. The size of her job is even more alarming because she can’t figure out how to contact WordPress [hint: try a search engine].

That said, Code Tech, not only did the protests fail to stop the war [Nixon stopped it, fulfilling a campaign pledge], but UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan presided over the murders of about 500,000 Darfur civilians, and the forcible eviction of two million more. Kofi Annan did, however, issue some very stern statements concerning the situation.

For doing nothing to stop the Darfur killings, Kofi Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2001. The Darfur killings continued.

“Historical records of sea ice change
Detailed studies have been made of possible correlations
between Viking and other early European
excursions to the High Arctic and the historical or
ice core records of climate change. The earliest
evidence of Vikings in the High Arctic is in the twelfth
century on Bache Peninsula (Schledermann 1980).
Ogalvie (1984) compared a decadal sea-ice index for
Iceland with that of earlier, less accurate work by
Koch (1945) and showed that for the earliest interval
of reliable historical records (1601–1780 A.D.), the
amount of sea ice between Greenland and Iceland
fluctuated from brief (10–30 years) lows of no or
minimal ice at intervals of about 90 years (1651–
1681 and in the 1740s). These low ice years alternated
with ~20 year periods of considerable ice in 1610–
1630, 1680–1710 and 1740–1760 (~50 year recurrence
Intervals”

Suziam48, you go ahead and prepare for warming, and I will prepare for both warming and cooling. Both have happened before, and will happen again. I am proud to say I have a very small carbon footprint, not because I believe carbon is bad in any way, but because I think it is lunacy to be wasteful, no matter what we have at our disposal. You are being rather self-righteous, if I may say so.

Cut Bank, Montana is 1200 miles south of the arctic circle, 2600 short of the pole – that’s a little?

Clearly you don’t know the difference between weather and climate. Allow me to help:

Weather
–noun
1. the state of the atmosphere with respect to wind, temperature, cloudiness, moisture, pressure, etc.

Climate
–noun
1. the composite or generally prevailing weather conditions of a region, as temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds, throughout the year, averaged over a series of years.

So, has the climate been getting colder over the past several years or warmer? Show us!

Suzi,
Unlike you and the other alarmists, WordPress believes in and celebrates freedom of speech, no matter how much that speech is inconvenient, politically incorrect, or dangerous to your political agenda.

maybe a Canadian reader can easily pinpoint the villages or towns in the article and confirm whether this was unusual or not …”

Thanks for the link Alex. The article states this was the first commercial vessel to take the northwest passage from eastern Canada. Normally the villages get their summer supplies from the Alaska side via tug boat and barge. The ship was ice-hardened and had a ice-breaker on standby but said they encountered no ice. So it looks like in low ice summers the passage is not too difficult.

Gary, the document (page 3) contains hockey stick graphs only.
The time line of the graphs start in the year 1.000 until 2.000.

We see a flat lining flux and temp graph until the year 1.500 that is followed by a dramatic increase.

This is interesting because the period that shows a rise in flux includes the Maunder and the Dalton Minimum.

There should also be an indication that would point to the Midieval Warmth Period which covered the period from 800 to 1.300 AC, a period in time where temperatures were higher than today. At least the first 300 years of the graph should show higher flux/surface temp data.

Regarding the Hawkbill photo: There should be a reflected image of the sun on the ice. Instead, there’s a dim pattern of specks of light scattered over an area about the size of a beach towel. If the albedo of the ice were 100%, the reflection would be exactly as bright as the sun itself. It’s not; it’s a lot dimmer. This indicates an albedo much less than 100%, probably as low as 30% or less, judging from the difference in brightness between the solar image and the ice. At zenith angles between 75° to 90°, the albedo of still water can be as high as 100%. A typical range would be 60% to 80%. The albedo of this particular ice is probably lower than the water under it! The average high latitude albedo of ice is not very different from open water, and often (as seen here) is even less.

Remember, also, that the vertical emissivity of the Arctic Ocean is about 0.993; the typically quoted emissivity of ice is only a fraction of that, about 0.20. Here, as shown in the photo, it might be as high as 0.70, still significantly below that of open water. Open water can shed heat in the Arctic winter even faster than ice. Add to that the insulating properties of ice, and the net result is that it’s extremely unlikely that the Earth will over heat due to the polar caps disappearing in some imaginary and irreversible “tipping point.”

Smokey, as I’m sure you know, that was my point. IN fact, protests etc. likely prolonged Vietnam and certainly cost lives on both sides. Protests heartened the enemy.

But that wasn’t my main point. I am ALWAYS entertained by people who see something they disagree with or that clashes with their worldview, and the first instinct is to ban it, block it, stop it, silence it, shut it down, etc.

Me? I believed in AGW. I really did. I studied a lot about it before realizing there even WAS a “debate”. I am glad I found John Daly’s site, and am more amazed every day that the sham continues, even though the wheels fell off after 1998.

Also, this thread got me started on studying the Skate, and I ended up wasting a couple of hours today browsing information about Nuclear Subs, and eventually Hanford (which is actually just a few hours drive from me). Fun stuff!

“Col. Joseph O. Fletcher. a retired Air Force polar specialist now with the Rand Corporation in California, has cited the presence or absence of pack ice around Iceland as an index of such trends (i.e. sunspot activity trends). From the 9th century to the 13th century almost no ice was reported there. This was the period of Norse colonization of Iceland and Greenland.”

“Two can play at this game. Since when is 30 years of satellite data enough to declare a long term trend?”

Relative to multiple daily data points and seasonal trends, 30 years is a long-term trend.

30 years is still a blink of an eye in climate history, saying it is a long term trend relative to a shorter trend does not validate it. Both the 30 year and recent trends tell us nothing worth knee-capping our economy over and you know this perfectly well. If we here take small pleasure from the discomfiture of those predicting imminent Arctic meltdown, well too bad.

“Especially when anecdotal evidence hints at a cyclical nature to Arctic ice coverage.”

The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data.

That is just a snark, not a rebuttal. Sorry, “scientists” do not appear to have dedicated their time to reconstructing historical Arctic ice coverage to the same degree as they devoted to teasing climactic data from proxies. Incredible statistical gymnastics were applied to produce the “hockey stick” but no similar efforts have been applied to historical Arctic ice coverage. So what is left is anecdotal evidence which is not quantitative or definitive but it may be a hint that you are on the wrong track.

“Recent trends may be “noise” but the recent trends are “noise” that flies in the faces of ice free Arctic predictions.”

So what? Until it redefines a new trend or reinforces the current one, noise is noise.

So you feel confident in extrapolating the 30 year trend to an ice free Arctic. Yes, it is a well known fact in some circles that climate phenomena always follow a linear path to catastrophe when man is implicated. How about we just take a deep breath and wait and see what happens before we officially declare that the sky is falling.

Thanks for the leads. Original Schledermann 1980 and Ogilvie 1984 seem hard to get hold off, but I’ll keep trying. And looking for them led me to new interesting sources. I’m in touch with HBC archives on another matter and may ask if they have papers.

I find this to be TERRIFYING news!!. I don’t know about all of you but if the Ice caps DO melt, and water goes up all over the WORLD my Home will be submerged in the ocean!!!.Glad I don’t tend to panic too much or be an ALARMIST, like some people i know.. Science can be a “Good Thing” if it is handled properly.. I KNOW this to be true, because I am one of the few men on this planet that can call themselves a “MOLECULAR GASTRONOMIST” and do it in the TRUE sense of the word.. Nothing happens by accident..I believe that GoD and Magic(k) led me here for a reason!!. If you like food check out my brand new web Page on Newsvine.com

Hey Jorge, interesting point about the lack of solar reflection, and yes, we would certainly expect a brighter spot on the ice under normal circumstances. I kept looking at the photo and never noticed that it was lacking until you pointed it out. On the other hand, we really do not have enough information about the photo and how it was made. For instance, the light coming off of the ice will be strongly dominated by the horizontally polarized component of the sunlight. Most good photographers will carry a polarizing filter with their gear so that they can cut out that reflection and glare. You make a good point, but we may just have a photo taken with a polarized filter on the lens!

“ak, you’ve been bamboozled. But don’t feel bad, lots of folks have been tricked by cryosphere’s “adjusted” charts. Compare their before and after ‘adjusted’ chart with yours: click.”

still a downward trend, right? ok. similar to the downward trend in thickness over the same time. you don’t see that with a handful of pics, you see that with data.

and anyway, i only used that source because i followed your link, and then looked around a bit. do you trust the source enough to make a point with it, or not? (or do you get to have it both ways?)

listen, i think it’s great how worked up you (guys in general) get worked up about small blips in this or that record, but blips are blips. remember the cold temps up north this past winter? think that could have something to do with the spike in ice extent (which to re-iterate is still at/below the mean)? heard anything about the sun’s quiescence recently? think that might have anything to do with NOT melting as much ice as it could?

2007 was wholly unremarkable from the rest of the recent record until July. 2008 didn’t deviate much until August. I don’t expect anything different for 2009… we’ll see come summer time.

“the Skate found open water both in the summer and following winter. We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick. The ice moves from Alaska to Iceland and the wind and tides causes open water as the ice breaks up. The Ice at the polar ice cap is an average of 6-8 feet thick, but with the wind and tides the ice will crack and open into large polynyas (areas of open water), these areas will refreeze over with thin ice. We had sonar equipment that would find these open or thin areas to come up through, thus limiting any damage to the submarine. The ice would also close in and cover these areas crushing together making large ice ridges both above and below the water. We came up through a very large opening in 1958 that was 1/2 mile long and 200 yards wide. The wind came up and closed the opening within 2 hours. On both trips we were able to find open water. We were not able to surface through ice thicker than 3 feet.”

Read that again and tell me this article is [snip]

A man on the sub TELLS you that what this article is claiming is FALSE.

“We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick.”

The North Pole was not even REMOTELY Ice free – the sub had to come up through 2 feet of ice, and that was only when they managed to find a thin spot, with most of the area covered with ice 6 to 8 feet thick.

“The ice moves from Alaska to Iceland and the wind and tides causes open water as the ice breaks up. The Ice at the polar ice cap is an average of 6-8 feet thick, but with the wind and tides the ice will crack and open into large polynyas (areas of open water), these areas will refreeze over with thin ice. We had sonar equipment that would find these open or thin areas to come up through, ”

Holes in the ice appear naturally and soon refreeze. These subs used those holes to surface. The fact is, the ice today is much thinner all over.

So not only is the premise of this article WRONG it is PROVED wrong by a quote it includes!

Anyone debating this [snip] about trends etc is wasting their time. He is a [snip] and will twist any “factoid” to suit his argument.

Reply: Play nice. Continued use of pejoratives and comments will be deleted in their entirety ~ charles the moderator

Does it not bother you that the chart you posted looked like it did only because the data was “adjusted” to make it look that way?

And Cryosphere doesn’t only adjust recent data, they adjust all the data. They can make their graphs look like whatever they want. When they adjust older data, they make the more recent chart look even scarier.

I posted a chart showing that global sea ice is now above its thirty year trend line. That is to be expected, given this year’s cold temperatures. Total sea ice oscillates around the trend line.

Literally hundreds of $Billions to $Trillions are proposed to be spent on a non-problem — based on fiddled charts like the one you posted.

Do you not see that as a problem? Is data manipulation to support a repeatedly falsified hypothesis OK with you?

Karmakaze,
The post that is the basis of this thread, as well as the quote, exactly prove the point:
The ice is not fixed, it opens closes independent of temperature, and that thinning ice in the Arctic is not unusual.
Your AGW faith does not permit you to comprehend that this exactly disproves the fear mongering of the AGW promoters. You are a true believer and are being taken on a ride, as long as you willingly participate by fooling yourself.

@smokey “And Cryosphere doesn’t only adjust recent data, they adjust all the data… They can make their graphs look like whatever they want…

I posted a chart showing that global sea ice is now above its thirty year trend line…”

So it is ‘get to have it your way’. Same source of data and graphs, but mine is bad – yours is good. Thanks for the clarification.

Also, why are you posting southern ice extent graphs now? How come it seems nobody wants to talk about Arctic ice extent/thickness in a thread specifically about Arctic ice extent/thickness? (Probably because the data doesn’t support the premise.)

“So not only is the premise of this article WRONG it is PROVED wrong by a quote it includes!”

@Karmakaze – Relax, this sort of thing isn’t so atypical around here… :)

AK,
This will give you an idea of some of the shenanigans taking place at CT.

This graph was put together by DeWitt Payne. It clearly shows that CT is not to be trusted. By adjusting historical data up and new data down they can fool lots and lots of people… They can even fool you on your IPhone.

“We came up through . We came up through a very large opening in 1958 that was 1/2 mile long and 200 yards wide. The wind came up and closed the opening within 2 hours. On both trips we were able to find open water.”

This statement

“We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick.”

Only indicates that in one area near the North Pole they found ice less than two feet thick. The reason for the thin ice (rather than 6 to 8 feet) is explained..

“The Ice at the polar ice cap is an average of 6-8 feet thick, but with the wind and tides the ice will crack and open into large polynyas (areas of open water), these areas will refreeze over with thin ice.”

Note the relevant facts.

Thin ice near the pole is not “global warming” but rather a refreeze after wind and tides cause a break up.

We know from 2007 that wind and waves can cause a significant ice loss.

We know that if the Catlin team makes it to the pole area finding sections of thin ice would not be abnormal.

Your mind is already made up. But for others following this issue, when ak said: “Same source of data and graphs, but mine is bad – yours is good. Thanks for the clarification”, he was referring to the following two charts. The top chart is the one ak originally posted, and the second one I posted to show the devious data manipulation by Cryosphere Today:

ak can’t be helped [cognitive dissonance is by definition incurable; when the world doesn’t end as predicted, those afflicted by CD simply re-set the goal posts, and await the next doomsday. They can not admit they’re wrong when CD takes hold; cognitive dissonance is a root worm that blinds the afflicted to any other point of view].

Others, however, can get a very clear snapshot of how we got to this point in the debate, by clicking on this.

And for your reading pleasure, here is another description of recent events: click. If you haven’t read it, you really should. Because $Trillion policy decisions are being decided, right now, based on these outright shenanigans in the corrupt climate peer-review process.

I am alarmed that WordPress.com seems to be associated with folks who denounce the concept of global warming. I cannot find any way to contact WordPress. I see that two anti-global warming blogs are prominently featured on the WordPress home page. What’s up with this?

I am alarmed that WordPress.com seems to be associated with folks who denounce the concept of global warming. I cannot find any way to contact WordPress. I see that two anti-global warming blogs are prominently featured on the WordPress home page. What’s up with this?

===================
I’m sorry you feel alarmed suziam. You’re right to be worried I think but, and please don’t walk away just yet, I think you’re worried about the wrong things.

Like you I was, also very worried about the consequences of global warming. Unlike you, however, I got lucky and overcame my fears before they affected my mental well-being!
I feel a bit embarrassed about what I’m about to say – it doesn’t come easy to a crusty old Scotsman like me to be indelicate- but I think you need help. I may be 100% wrong- ach weel it’ll not be the first time  – but in for a penny, in for a pound!

You want anti-global warming viewpoints to be put into quarantine, crated up and buried.
Is that really you?
Is dissension and debate about climate science so distasteful as to be ranked alongside holocaust-denial, racial hatred and religious intolerance?
Are all ‘denialists’ so intellectually challenged that they believe the world is flat?
Does the questioning of ‘consensus’ projections about the consequences of AGW make one an ‘Earth-Hater’ or a shill of Big-Oil?

If your answer to any of the above is ‘yes’, then you, truly, are at a critical cross-road in life. The step you next take may well define your future. Choose well!

It should be about the science – the data – the facts- and every argument deserves an airing. Yes, you’ll always get the crazies – there’s no magic bullet for them – never has been, never will be! But, and this is crucial, by exposing the crazies to the oxygen of open and objective debate we can identify and thus exclude their hypotheses. What we should have left over is a payload, untainted by subjective, commercial and political contamination. That is not where we are at!

My road to recovery began for all the wrong reasons. So convinced was I that mankind was headed to ignominious oblivion that I kept looking for examples of catastrophe that supported that view. I found lots and lots of doomsday predictions that reinforced my worldview until the ‘law of unintended consequences’ puckishly intruded and planted a seed of doubt!

I found skeptical sites and found out that the debate was not over as far as some were concerned. Not a problem, I initially thought, that’s the Internet for you and God bless the crazies!
Then I started to notice anomalies that, however hard I resisted, kept on niggling me. Why was I getting the impression that pro-AGW sites, such as those hosted by Gavin and Tamino, were so intolerant of opposing opinions that they came over as rude, ill-tempered bullies unlike WUWT and CA?

The endless repetition by the aforementioned AGW proponents of ‘appeal to authority’ argument, followed by ad-hominem attack and denigration rapidly turned me against those who employed such tactics – It seemed to me that such a public display of bad manners was more a symptom of blustering arrogance than that of reasoned and helpful persuasion!

Suziam48, that’s when the doubts first crept in – maybe for the wrong reasons – in short I started out by disliking the messengers which led to me question their motives; and that made me question the message itself! Agreed that doesn’t make the Science wrong if the message is correct but it should ring a warning bell. Take care when choosing where your next step will take,

PS – I still worry about AGW
I worry that the ‘current consensual perception of certainty’ of the actions needed to combat it, far exceeds the scientific evidence that it is actually a problem.
I worry that the ‘current consensual perception of certainty’ will bring to fruition sets of measures and counter-measures that will achieve precisely the opposite of what they attempt to do.
Mostly, however, I worry about people like you Suziam48. Your passion, intelligence and anger are not in doubt – fantastic attributes – but are you able to re-trace and then re-examine your sources?

The Almanac is reasonably prescient too, as it must have been compiled in the summer of 2008.

As both that article and another reader mentioned, the forecast was done with help from Joe D’Aleo (see http://icecap.us/ ). Joe’s article is at http://www.almanac.com/timeline/ . Joe has been one of the most consistent and forceful arguers that warming was not due to CO2. I believe the Almanac brought Joe in after a rather poor winter forecast for 2007/2008 and Joe came up with one based largely on the PDO, AMO, and probably solar data (the Almanac likes sunspots).

> There’s an awful lot of light in the “17 March 1959” north pole picture, given that the sun is still about 1.5° below the horizon and hasn’t yet risen at the north pole on March 17.

According to my software, the Sun’s declination was -1.53° on that date. Unfortuately, I’m not quite sure which hour that’s for (hey, I wrote it in 1980 or so!) The declination is changing about 0.40° per day then. American sunrise/sunset is defined as the moment the upper limb of the sub is on the horizon. Given the the size of the Sun and refraction, that moment is close to when the center of the sun is about 0.5° below the horizon.

Civil twilight is defined as the period when the Sun is between -0.5° and -6°, so if the photo was taken right at the North Pole, it would be during bright twilight. At temperate latitudes, civil twilight lasts for about a half an hour, duting this period in the US most states (all?) permit drivers to drive without headlights on.

The Ice at the polar ice cap is an average of 6-8 feet thick, but with the wind and tides the ice will crack and open into large polynyas (areas of open water), these areas will refreeze over with thin ice.

There’s your thin ice. And ice 6 – 8 feet thick ice is what the Three Stooges/Catlin gang found this year. That deconstructs the most recent moving of the goal posts by the alarmist contingent. Current ice conditions are essentially the same as they were fifty years ago, the desperate arm-waving of the warmers notwithstanding.

We’re skeptics here, and all we’re saying is: prove it. Or if you can’t, at least show some strong, real world evidence [in other words, no GCM “evidence”] that the current climate is outside of its normal and natural historical parameters.

The global warming alarmists are really grasping at straws here, still trying to convince everyone else that a rise in a minor trace gas will eliminate the North Pole ice cap.

well played! misdirection is the first skill learned by any good magician.

here are the timestamps of the images i refered to previously. I’m affixing timestamps so that the readers (and I do apologize for having to post this again) can verify the chronology and sleight of hand: Ak said… “Same source of data and graphs, but mine is bad – yours is good.”

Ak reiterates… “How come it seems nobody wants to talk about Arctic ice extent/thickness in a thread specifically about Arctic ice extent/thickness? (Probably because the data doesn’t support the premise.)”

Michelle Malkin points out a local weatherman disagrees with MSNBC’s AGW scaremongering, including by pointing out that their AGW claim of the poles being the “climate machine” is obviously wrong, as the machine is obviously the tropics.http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/27/msnbc/

arctic-astronomy (08:54:38) : There’s an awful lot of light in the “17 March 1959″ north pole picture, given that the sun is still about 1.5o below the horizon and hasn’t yet risen at the north pole on March 17.

Or fast film and a fast lens. The soft focus foreground and slightly soft at the tail of the boat indicate a very open fast lens. There seems to be a graininess (though hard to tell through the binary translation) that would indicate a fast B&W film. There appears to be slight motion blur to some of the peoples heads that would indicate a shutter speed of about 1/30 to 1/50 second (though again, access to a better image would let me make a more reliable evaluation). The overall flatness of the image implies fast film, pushed processing, or very flat lighting (such as indirect lighting from cloud diffusion / reflection) or all three.

I would speculate that this is a picture taken on about an ASA 400 film, perhaps an ASA 200 pushed to 800 at most, with an f stop of about F2 to F4, and a shutter speed of about 1/30 of a second. I would speculate it was 120 format, since 35mm was still relatively new then, but it could be 35mm as Tri-X was introduced in that format in 1954. If 35mm, the photographer had to have a very steady hand or a stable gunwale to brace against. IIRC, a 2 stop push was well known then and Kodak Tri-X was introduced in the ’40s with an ASA of 200. I don’t remember the 1959 speed, by 1970 it was ASA 400. Given that I’ve taken street pictures at night with such settings, diffuse over the horizon sunlight from cloud bounce ought to provide more than enough light. I see nothing in the picture to indicate it is fraudulent.

The general poor sharpness argues for a not very great lens or a good one so far open on the f stop that it has lost significant sharpness and some more sharpness lost to push processing. There is not enough in the corners to evaluate corner sharpness, though the slight blur to the edge of the bow says edge sharpness is a bit low, though finding an equivalent distance center frame target for relative sharpness is hard. There is either a slight motion blur or the overall sharpness is softer than I’d like, but I think there is a bit more center than edge sharpness. Lens open wide or poor edge of frame sharpness. Hard to tell in this size digital conversion, it could just be an artifact of the copy process.

The very flat washed out overexposed sky says that the light is coming from the clouds and the Skate had far less light on it than the clouds had, so the clouds get washed out in over exposure to get proper light from the Skate / water. Indirect lighting from cloudy overcast sky, not much direct lighting at the water surface.

Compare it with the second picture of the Skate. Much higher contrast with hot spots, sharp edges, greater depth of field, even what looks like a small quantity of cloud detail near the conning tower. Much more light, lens stopped down, shutter faster, less / no push processing, and though the figures are smaller making it harder to determine – they do not seem to show motion blur (even though there is what might be an expectation of motion given the bent posture of the bodies).

Finally, though they are color pictures, the more recent photos such as the Hawkbill show a hard crisp sharpness with great detail and depth of field of a full daylight snow scene consistent with a full sun environment. That is what is missing from the Skate pictures and what you would expect to see if the pictures had been taken in full sun with the sun above the horizon.

Again, access to better copies of the image would allow a more definitive analysis and less rampant speculation, but these pictures are all consistent with their asserted context.

(And yes, working in security and forensics warps how you see pictures for a very long time… though I can still turn it off and just enjoy the art of them.)

Well in 1956 the Arctic ‘calved’ more icebergs than ever today…
One other important thing is that before 1959 no regular data are available for the North Pole’s inner parts in series of reading. Why? Simply because before there was even one scientistic group living over longer periods in the inner parts of the Arctic no such readings could be done….

One other important thing to remember. The ice under a certain spot today aren’t the ice from same longitud/latitude of yesterday. Ice moves.

It’s a bit better image, but not by much. Less flat contrast, but not by enough to change my opinion. Sharpness is better, so I’m less critical of the lens quality. If the image format reflects the film format, it’s closest to 122 film size (also called ‘postcard’) though it doesn’t exactly match anything. Aspect ratio of about 1.66 : 1 where 35mm is 1.5 : 1 and 120 format 6×9 is also 1.5:1 and some odd 120 frame sizes are 1.5x : 1 with postcard at 1.69:1 so I’d guess at this point it was a ‘postcard’ camera in 122 film format or 1.5:1 image with the foreground cropped to remove excess water and raft to fit on a postcard. It is possible it’s a 35mm rangefinder camera (they were around then and would fit easier on a small sub) and if this image is as sharp as it gets, well, even old poor 120 film in 6 x 9 had better sharpness than this image. I’d expected the original to be much larger than this and with better resolution. My error of assumption / guessing.

So at this point the only change I’d make is to say I think it’s a 35mm rangefinder with Tri-X in ASA 200, possibly push processed a stop or two, stabilized by resting on the raft gunwale and with the image cropped to remove excess foreground from that ersatz ‘tripod’.

This picture is the most fantastic thing I’ve seen in the whole AGW pantomime. Of course it’s naughty but nothing compared to the polar bears, penguins and melting glaciers. this is the deniers polar bear. Keep up the good work gentlemen

“So you feel confident in extrapolating the 30 year trend to an ice free Arctic.”

sNo, not from 30 years of satellite data alone. But when it is reinforced by 11,000 years of core ice sample data from glaciers all over the planet, I have greater confidence.

So does your “greater confidence” extend so far that you consider the science “settled”? I imagine one can rationally favour the AGW hypothesis without raving about tipping points and polar bears dieing. The fact is that we are not going to appreciably reduce or CO2 production in the near future so it will be interesting to follow climate trends over the next decade.

I have added the photo of the USS Skate at the North Pole to the wikipedia articles here. Hope everybody can help make sure they stay up there in the face of historical revisionism from the alarmists, and complain to wiki admins if certain individuals persist in removing them….

Stephen Daivs (00:43:46) : Polynyas are a phenomenon known for quite a long period of time, they are areas of open water that form (sometimes briefly) (sometimes in the same spot) they occur in both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.

Oh, golly, you mean when those ice shelves in Antarctica break and get a big water gap in them it isn’t due to global warming, it’s strictly natural? Why thank you for enlightening me and making that clear.

Adam Soereg (01:59:58) : even mention the fast recovery of Arctic sea ice extent to near-normal levels. Let I guess, next year they will come out with an unprecedented low level of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year ice.

And don’t forget that with that 2nd and 3rd year ice in the way, they can legitimately state “Less new ice formed at the arctic this year than last!!!”

Jason Calley (17:29:38) : “Hey Jorge, interesting point about the lack of solar reflection, and yes, we would certainly expect a brighter spot on the ice under normal circumstances. I kept looking at the photo and never noticed that it was lacking until you pointed it out. On the other hand, we really do not have enough information about the photo and how it was made. For instance, the light coming off of the ice will be strongly dominated by the horizontally polarized component of the sunlight. Most good photographers will carry a polarizing filter with their gear so that they can cut out that reflection and glare. You make a good point, but we may just have a photo taken with a polarized filter on the lens!”

Yes, I’d agree. A polarized filter would account for almost zero visible specular reflection, if it’s there. I did consider a filter, but the surface of the ice here seemed quite rough, consistent with much lower than normal albedo. Under either scenario, the rest of my post is unaffected; Arctic ice just isn’t the ideal reflector it’s assumed to be. Good comment, Jason.

Sailors from the Seadragon (SSN-584), background, clowning around on the ice during the craft’s August 1960 Arctic operation. The batter is ready to receive the first baseball ever pitched at the North Pole. http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0858412.jpg

An elevated view of the attack submarines Ray (SSN-653), Hawkbill (SSN-666), and & Archerfish (SSN-678) surfaced at the geographic North Pole, 6 May 1986 during ICEX 86. This is the first time three nuclear-powered submarines have simultaneously surfaced at the pole. http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0866623.jpg

The sail of the nuclear-powered attack submarine Billfish (SSN-676) protudes from the ice while the ship is surfaced at the North Pole. The sail-mounted diving planes are in the vertical position for breaking through the ice on 30 Mar 1987. http://navsource.org/archives/08/500/0867605.jpg

U.S. and British sailors explore the Arctic ice cap while conducting the first U.S./British coordinated surfacing at the North Pole. The ships are, left to right: the nuclear-powered attack submarine Sea Devil (SSN-664), the fleet submarine HMS Superb (S-109) , and the nuclear-powered attack submarine Billfish (SSN-676), 18 May 1987. http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0866408.jpg

U.S. and British sailors explore the Arctic ice cap while conducting the first U.S./British coordinated surfacing at the North Pole. The ships are, left to right: the nuclear-powered attack submarine Sea Devil (SSN-664), the fleet submarine HMS Superb (S-109) , and the nuclear-powered attack submarine Billfish (SSN-676), 18 May 1987. http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0866403.jpg

Look at a properly laid out, accurately built armillary sphere: It will show th esun’s position above the horizon for every day of the year – at the latitude the pole of the armillary is set for.

The sun’s height above the horizon – which is proportional to the length of each day – only very slowly moves from its minimum height (on Dec 22) to exactly even (12 hours from sunup to sundown) on March 22 to maximum height on June 22, and back to a twelve hour day on Sept 22.

(Yeah – I know – sometimes its the 21st, not the 22nd – but notice that the photo’s taken of the submarines at the north pole were dated March 17. Very close to the 12 hour day (midpoint or equinox) of March 21-22.)

So, when the photo was taken, the pole had 12 hours of daylight, and an hour or so before (and after) of twilight when the light was only slightly lower quality. Only much later in the year does the pole (the area above the Arctic Circle/below the Antarctic Circle) get the proverbial 24 hours of sunlight. In winter, same rule applies: 24 hours of darkness doesn’t suddenly change to 24 hours of sunlight in one day.

thank you very much for this news. If this turns out to be true, the whole arctic ice melting thing is proven to be a total scam.

From Radio Bremen interview:

“The research aircraft Polar 5 ended today in Canada a recent Arctic expedition. During the flight, researchers have measured the current ice thickness at the North Pole, and in areas that have never before been overflown. Result: The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than scientists had suspected.

Normally, after two years newly formed ice is over two meters thick. “Here ice thickness was up to four meters,” said a spokesman of Bremerhaven’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. For scientists, this result is contradicting the warming of the seawater.

Besides the ice thickness, also the composition of the air was investigated. With the help of a laser, the researchers reviewed how polluted the atmosphere by emissions from industrialized countries. In the next few weeks the results are evaluated. On the expedition were some 20 scientists from the U.S., Canada, Italy and Germany.”

Here is a quote from the Alfred Wegener Institute web site about their Arctic measurement campaign (which ended today):

“The extent of Arctic sea ice has declined stronger than predicted by climate models. However, little is known about changes of its thickness. Sea ice is in constant movement and it can become thicker by deformation than by freezing. Therefore, not only the areal extent of the ice is an important variable in the Arctic climate system, but also its thickness. “We hope to gain an appraisal of the whole Arctic ice volume for the first time ever in order to be able to compare the changes in the different regions”, says Dr. Andreas Herber, physicist and in charge of the research aircrafts of the Alfred Wegener Institute. The operation of the research aircraft Polar 5 will allow for the first time to carry out large scale ice thickness measurements in Arctic key areas which could hitherto not be reached by the German research vessel Polarstern.”

I made a similar sort of comment a few days ago, I can remember being surprised at submarines surfacing at the North pole.

Arctic Ice volume has, I think, varied over long periods, I believe I read somewhere, but haven’t recently been able to verify, that Chinese mariners over a thousand years ago reported that there were big gaps in the ice and the North East Passage to, what is now, Russia was open for tens of years.

There must also be a cycle of single and multi year ice, my own interpretation is that it’s very dependent on the AMO, with strong Westerlies in a Positive AMO period, more warm water, relatively speaking, is pushed North of Europe and melts the Ice from below.

We had, until this last 2008-9 winter, nailed on westerlies for 4-6 week periods for each of the last 7 years, perhaps someone could try to calculate what the heat transfer from South West to North East is, I think it’s probably enough to raise the temperature of the sea below the ice by a few degrees, possibly enough to accentuate the melting and thinning.

This last winter, on the other hand has seen a much more neutral to negative AMO, so if my theory has any merits, there will be less melting, therefore more ice this year.

Hu McCulloch (06:50:07) : According to Hester’s account, the sub had to break through 2 feet of ice to do a winter surfacing. I see the ice in other photos, but not in this one.

REPLY: There is ice floating in the water, look carefully. – Anthony

Also, notice the slab of ice that one of the mariners is standing on. At the front of the bow, the first guy is about 1.5 feet off the deck. That is ice he is standing on. Also notice the ice crusts on the bow itself. This boat has just come through a couple of feet of ice somewhere. It is also a bit easier to see the floating ice in this archive copy:

where if you look carefully you can also see some of the subsurface ice near the foreground below the surface ice blobs. What looks a bit like surface wind / ripple haze in the smaller picture is more easily seen to be subsurface portions of the ice chunk that is supporting the foreground blobs in the slightly larger picture. Finally, there is a chunk of ice visible in the background just behind the center of the bow as a line to the edge of the picture. It’s hard to tell if that’s a floater or the edge of a shelf, since the background starts to fuzz up due to depth of field issues behind it. My guess based on the relative fuzziness is that it’s about the same distance away as the stern of the boat and is the broken edge of a thin ice field with depth matching the chunk the sailor is standing upon.

So my photo interpretation of his is that the boat surfaced through about 1.5 to 2 feet of ice sheet while underway (making forward progress) at very slow speed (such that a chunk could get stuck on the bows) and left an open trail behind it. Upon stopping, the captain had a bit of extra ‘stern screws’ going and the boat drifted backwards just a little from this. The photographer was put over the side in a small raft into the open water thus made and set his camera (as detailed in prior photo-oriented interpretation postings here) while the rest of the crew adopted the positions shown in the photo. I could speculate that the party appears to be appropriate to Captain with the conning tower, deck officer and raft launch party on deck, photographer / science or mid grade officer in the raft; but that’s stretching it a bit from the actual data in the photo. They all do have period appropriate clothing that is also arctic appropriate and indicative of very cold weather. 2 or possibly 3 of the mariners have left hand positions indicative of holding coffee cups (possibly cocoa … can’t tell that from the photo 8-) but I don’t think it was as common as coffee then.

Oh, and if you look at the bow fin lower edge and the side of the boat, you see evidence of water runoff freezing into surface ice. Wherever they surfaced, the air temperature is below freezing, most likely by a significant amount or the boat skin heat would have prevented rapid freezing

And one human perspective note. If the open water had been behind the boat, due to no reverse screws, the raft would have been to the rear and the photo would have had a different perspective, but still had the open water because that is where you put the raft. That there is open water in the picture just tells you what people do with rafts and prudence about not walking on thin recently fractured ice; it does not tell you that ice is missing elsewhere including on the other side of the boat nor at the other end of the boat where it disappears into a haze of soft edge focus, depth of field limits, and contrast falloff.

Isn’t photo interpretation fun?

BTW, when folks challenge these kinds of photos it really would be a good idea to practice a bit more precise observation skills before hitting “submit”. It is really just a matter of looking, small area by small area, at the photo and asking yourself “What is everything I can learn from the objects and lighting in this area?”. (We’ll leave issues of provenance and photo technology for another day…) Then sort it into Known, Probable, and Speculative. You will find much more in any photo than you might expect…

Makes the assertion that since the Captains retelling of his surfacing has wind and cold and blowing snow (not in the picture) that the picture must be totally fraudulent. Folks, this is called weather. It changes.

Now I can’t say if the photo was taken on exactly the 17th or within an hour of surfacing. My GUESS would be that it was probably after a day or so of the actual surfacing. Were I captaining the boat, I’d come up, do a weather check at the conning tower AND have a crew hull inspection for damages AND do a brief 5 foot under to check for hard to see leaks AND do a radio check / wait for orders AND probably have a nice cup of coffee and maybe even a long congratulatory talk to the crew. Then, and only then, would I think about putting out a “shore party”. Plenty of time for a storm to fade.

Which brings me to part two: Human Factors.

Do you really think the Captain would put crew overboard in a dingy or raft in a blowing storm? Or do you think that just maybe he would wait a day or so for the storm to blow on by? Since there is no day / night cycle of sun rise / set at this point, it would take a ships chronometer to really say when one day ended and the next began and sub crews work around the clock. The boat never sleeps.

So I’m the photographer. We surface and work for 12 to 14 hours making ready. At some point, I take a picture of us at the pole during our event of surfacing at the pole initiated on the 17th. Am I really all that concerned about placarding that picture as “Skate, surfaced on the 17th, then dunked for a hull check, then resurfaced 4 hours later, then did a maintenance check, finally got to go in the raft and took this picture that might have been the 18th or 19th but I don’t really know ’cause I’m just a grunt and don’t have chronometer access and they work us 24 hrs a day anyway at times like this” or would I instead say “We surfaced on the 17th and here is a picture of us at the pole then (meaning the event)”.

The complaint really comes down to ought the caption be: “Skate, had surfaced on the 17th” or “Skate, surfacing and photo on exactly the 17th”.

JHPC folks, if AGW had to meet that standard of proof we’d all be issued arctic coats by NASA by now…

The captain wrote his memoirs and talked up the cold on surfacing a bit. A while (ill defined, but a day maybe two max given low snow level on the deck) later the storm has a break and they do a quick photo op (which explains the ice on the bow fin and skin, it had TIME to get cold on the skin) and the photo is labeled with the EVENT not the CHRONOMETER. Big eff… deal.

REPLY: Perhaps the NAVY can help, even if we throw out that photo, there are others listed that support the same idea. – Anthony

There is no reason what so ever to toss out that photo. It is completely consistent with the location, time, event, historical context, historical record, etc. ad. nauseum. It has a trivial discrepancy with a memoir of an initial surface condition as the boat broke the surface that is not at all a persistent state (i.e. the weather changes) and at most might have a trivial 1 to 2 day time stamp issue. Big Whoop.

Given what GIStemp does with rewriting historical temperatures 100 years in the past and 1500 km away from a station, I would count this picture as a solid gold standard of accuracy in comparison. So toss GIStemp, keep the photo.

Shows a full color full sun picture of the Skate from the same period (the wiki story says the surfaced 10 times on their polar run). Notice that it is full color and high resolution.

This tells me that they had nice color film that needed lots of light but could not use it for their polar picture (i.e. it was dark and they needed more than ASA 100 to get any picture at all). Assuming it’s the same camera (reasonable assumption on a small boat, consistent with pictures) we know the lens when stopped down gives very good depth of field and reasonable edge sharpness (confirming prior estimates of camera settings for polar picture as opposed to it just being a bad camera). There is an interesting fuzzy cloud at the stern again. I suspect now that there is a purging of the air systems going on and that is vapor condensation in both pictures. In this picture you can see the open water behind the boat where it surfaced before butting up to the ice to let off a ‘shore party’. This picture IMHO, confirms that the polar picture was taken before significant sun was above the horizon (i.e. indirect light from high cloud) and puts the date at 17, 18, 19th interval. After that, you had sun above the horizon and would have had significantly more light with a harsher side lighting effect.

is the same picture as in the WUWT article, but includes a bit of legal reference to the provider and cites the taker of the photo as a navy employee for purposes of public domain copyright (i.e. it’s isn’t photoshopped or someone is on the hook for a copyright violation…)

Sites multiple subs making multiple trips to the arctic and pole with multiple surfacings including:

In early March 1959 , she again headed for the Arctic to pioneer operations during the period of extreme cold and maximum ice thickness. The submarine steamed 3,900 miles (6,300 km) under pack ice while surfacing through it ten times. On 17 March, she surfaced at the North Pole to commit the ashes of the famed explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins to the Arctic waste. When the submarine returned to port, she was awarded a bronze star in lieu of a second Navy Unit Commendation for demonstrating “… for the first time the ability of submarines to operate in and under the Arctic ice in the dead of winter….” In the fall of 1959 and in 1960, Skate participated in exercises designed to strengthen American antisubmarine defenses.

So you can argue with the Navy about wether or not they awarded a Bronze Star and Unit Commendation based on the truth, or not. Me, I’m of the opinion that Bronze Stars and Unit Commendations are a bit hard to come by and not handed out willy nilly. Might even take some photo documentation…

Bob (12:14:44) : BTW, the sun in the pictures in the above articles looks to be about 30 degrees above the horizon. The sun a maximum of 23 degrees above the horizon at the geographic pole on or about June 20. Perhaps the pictures were taken at lower latitudes in the Arctic and the authors of the articles just forgot to mention that.

Unless you know the focal length of the lens used, it’s distortion figure, and the distance of the camera from the objects, you can not accurately determine angle of the sun above the horizon. Certainly not to single digit degrees. Sorry.

(Think of a fisheye lens as an extreme case. The sun will always be in the picture if you point the camera straight up… 180 degrees of photo angle gets compressed into about 45 to 20 degrees of viewing angle for a print, less for the images here… mild wide angle was normal in the cameras of that era – about 45 mm being common, 35mm for some, with greater distortion near the edges.)

jorgekafkazar (16:06:25) : Regarding the Hawkbill photo: There should be a reflected image of the sun on the ice. Instead, there’s a dim pattern of specks of light scattered over an area about the size of a beach towel.

I’ve had that in snow pictures before. The reflectance depends greatly on the texture of the snow / ice crystals. Internal reflections in ice grains can soak up a lot of sun. IIRC, snow with a bit of grain in it gives this kind of picture. Also notice that the surface is heavily stippled. Much of the incident sun will be reflected in directions away from the camera. I was more taken by the fact that the sun is directly in the picture, yet no rainbow artifacts from the lens coating and no phantom aperture shape is in the frame. Nice Lens! (Or uncoated optics stopped way down…)

There is a fair amount of washout around the sun from flare. You can’t just judge the size of the sun from the size of its image due to this overexposure flare and washout.

Finally, notice that the snow is about 10% to 15% grey scale approaching 18% near the edges in the photo while the tower is flat black. This image is exposed for the SNOW not the boat nor the people. This means WAY stopped down which means further attenuation of any solar reflectance off the stippled surface. IFF the photo had been exposed for the boat and people I would have expected an overexposed sun reflectance patch.

I see nothing inconsistent in this photo, though the falloff in the darkness of the sky in the corners and generally deep blue make me wonder if a polarizing filter was used (as does the light rays from the sun image…). That is what I would do to cut specular reflection off the snow / ice surface, intensify the sky, get a neat solar image with a bit of rays, and generally flatten the glare out of the whole thing.

Hey folks, a StephenHudson fellow from Norway is vandalizing my edits on Wikipedia on the arctic articles adding the USS Skate. Can we get some support there? He is apparently an alarmist according to his user page.

“So does your “greater confidence” extend so far that you consider the science ‘settled’?”

Scientific theory is never “settled,” but until better theories resolve minor inconsistencies (like the tropospheric masking effects provided by volcanic eruptions and the mitigating effects on Atlantic storm formation by airborne Saharan sand), the current ones serve adequately. Solar forcing, however, has been demonstrated to be a minor contributor to Global Warming. Those who claim the last 8-10 years show a cooling trend never respond to requests for studies in support of that assertion, so what am I to imply other than they don’t exist?

“I imagine one can rationally favour the AGW hypothesis without raving about tipping points and polar bears dying.”

I am not an alarmist, but I take extreme exception to current attempts by unqualified individuals to discredit studies supporting AGW. Claiming elitism is a spurious rebuttal for one’s lack of training in statistical analysis. If one wants to challenge science, one should be adequately trained in the tools of the trade.

“The fact is that we are not going to appreciably reduce or CO2 production in the near future so it will be interesting to follow climate trends over the next decade.”

Unfortunately true and ultimately discouraging. The prospect of accurately forecasting AGW effects, with the consequences like crop failure, famine, and competition for water rights and arable land, isn’t a comforting thought. It’s perhaps the only time we hope we’re wrong.

.
>>During the flight, researchers have measured the current ice
>>thickness at the North Pole, and in areas that have never before
>>been overflown. Result: The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is
>>apparently thicker than scientists had suspected.

@TonyB,
Tony,
many thanks, that’s a fascinating reference. The thought of icebergs at Constantinople is amazing! It would make a wonderful background for a historical novel. It’s also fascinating to wonder how our modern world would respond to such a catastrophe triggered by a volcano. But at least it might wipe the grin off Al Gore’s face!
It may be true that the lack of climate-changing volcanoes in recent decades may have contributed to the late 20th century warming. Also, if this historical eruption had occurred a bit later, at the height of the MWP, then maybe it would have been a bit less severe.
Both this and the Ipiutak discovery seventy years ago tend to confirm my belief that history can teach us a lot about climate change. Ipiutak does seem to provide very strong proof that, in one part of the Arctic at least, the climate was considerably warmer around two thousand years ago. I wonder how many other Ipiutak’s are waiting to be discovered underneath the ice sheets?
I do find it quite funny when, with regard to Arctic ice, the scientists tell us to ignore the last year or so – when, inconveniently, the ice appears to be increasing – and to look at the long term trend. Trouble is, by ‘long term’ they probably mean around thirty years, the period covered by the satellites. Of course, if you really look at the long term evidence, including the historical record, then a very different picture emerges. Something very strange and suspicious emerges. It’s called ‘natural variability’. It also strongly suggests that – like shares – temperatures can go down as well as up.
Chris

Mike Lorrey (14:06:59) :
Hey folks, a StephenHudson fellow from Norway is vandalizing my edits on Wikipedia on the arctic articles adding the USS Skate. Can we get some support there? He is apparently an alarmist according to his user page.

You simply have to stop publishing things factual Anthony. Research done in the ’70’s was succinct in determining that the human being is nine times more susceptible to rumor than it is to fact. Keeping that in mind, and observing that very mindset these days, we simply cannot have such things as facts and truth bandied about like so much scientific knowledge. Peoples brains might burst for goodness sakes! If the current iteration of Homo sapiens were to realize that not only is the planet more than 6k years old, but that between 6k to 7k years ago we had a sea level peak about 20 feet (6 meters) higher than today, or that at the LGM (Last Glacial Maximum, or ~17k years ago) sea levels were a mere 300 feet below present, they might be faced between the now time honored choice of whether or not to believe potential future facts (also known as model results) or rootin tootin facts themselves. Time honored in the context that all the way back to the Mid Pleistocene Transition interglacials tend to last just about half of a precessional cycle (which means this one is pretty much kaput since those cycles are 23k years and the Holocene is now at 11.5k years….), and that during the the last one (meaning interglacial, of course), the Eemian (also the one in which H. sapiens debuted on the evolutionary stage) sea levels only crested present day sea levels five times, and only a smidge higher than today (between 65 and 170 feet, depending on whose highstand data passes your rumor filter) we are probably right at pretty much where we should be, right at this very moment. That being, of course, on the precipice of the next abrupt climate change event. Those pesky reliable, dramatic and wholly unavoidable thingies that just happen to be responsible for the fastest encephalization of any creature in the entire fossil record. That being us of course. In the past 3 or so million years, or 33 said climate change events, Homo whatever went from an average of 500cc to 2500cc, and did so in the closest thing to a non-straight line as one can imagine. You don’t suppose it took near freezing to death during at least the past 7 deep freezes (90k or so years cold for every half precessional cycle warm) to weed out those amongst us prone to that thing we now define as a fatal mistake do you? Of course not! Homo neanderthalensis, H. heidelbergensis, H. erectus, H. ergaster, H. rudolfensis and H. habilis (first tool user and first homo derived from the australopithecines)? Oops! I wandered back into the days of the 41k year ice age/interglacial cycles (which match the obliquity in our orbit). My mistake. Too much fact for that hot global salsa, huh? What I was attempting to convey is that if those reliable, dramatic and completely unavoidable abrupt climate change events are remotely on schedule, we may very well be due for a long overdue braincase upgrade once again. By golly, given what I see being bandied about today about climate change, we could sure use one…….

Reply: If I may offer some friendly constructive criticism, the use of that clever invention known as paragraphs, combined with the joy of line breaks would make the above post easier to read as well as potentially more humorous. ~ charles the comedy critic moderator

“So does your “greater confidence” extend so far that you consider the science ’settled’?”

Scientific theory is never “settled,” but until better theories resolve minor inconsistencies (like the tropospheric masking effects provided by volcanic eruptions and the mitigating effects on Atlantic storm formation by airborne Saharan sand), the current ones serve adequately. Solar forcing, however, has been demonstrated to be a minor contributor to Global Warming. Those who claim the last 8-10 years show a cooling trend never respond to requests for studies in support of that assertion, so what am I to imply other than they don’t exist?

AGW at this stage is a hypothesis, not a theory. Your faction champions atmospheric concentration CO2 as a major driver of climate change but others feel your science is too weak and premature to justify Draconian measures against our way of life.

Solar forcing has not been “demonstrated” (which I read as proved) to have only a minor role in climate variability. While TSR does not vary much over the short term, research continues on other solar factors and how they relate to earth’s climate. Besides, we have Lief here to rein us in if we stray too far into solar nonsense.

Who needs a study to see a recent flat to cooling trend. You can look for yourself at the RSS or UAH global temperature anomaly charts and see that temperature trends have been flat to decreasing since 2002.

“I imagine one can rationally favour the AGW hypothesis without raving about tipping points and polar bears dying.”

I am not an alarmist, but I take extreme exception to current attempts by unqualified individuals to discredit studies supporting AGW. Claiming elitism is a spurious rebuttal for one’s lack of training in statistical analysis. If one wants to challenge science, one should be adequately trained in the tools of the trade.

Your closing sentence below somewhat belies your claim of not being an alarmist. You are simply a well mannered alarmist. Take courteous extreme exception if you wish but it does not advance your case. Railing against criticism by alleged unqualified individuals is merely a back door appeal to authority. Your citation of skeptic lack of training in statistical analysis is a particularly inappropriate example on your part. The first string contributors at Climate Audit are easily a match in statistical analysis for your vaunted Taminos, Gavins and Manns.

“The fact is that we are not going to appreciably reduce or CO2 production in the near future so it will be interesting to follow climate trends over the next decade.”

Unfortunately true and ultimately discouraging. The prospect of accurately forecasting AGW effects, with the consequences like crop failure, famine, and competition for water rights and arable land, isn’t a comforting thought. It’s perhaps the only time we hope we’re wrong.

It is refreshing and reassuring to have an AGW proponent say that they hope they are wrong. Oddly, many of them convey the impression that they relish being right (and righteous!). Catastrophism has always had a perverse appeal to mankind.

If it is accepted that our planet Earth has evolved over millions of years through ice ages and hot periods, why does man, whose existance here is minuscule, have the right to designate the “correct” climate for planet Earth. It has obviously and factually changed drasticaly through time, what gives us the right to select the “proper” climate?

I don’t understand the fuss of the top post. Occasionally the ice floes constantly moving around the North Pole separate enough to leave some open water, and have done so for as long as we’ve had people studying 90 degrees North. No one has EVER claimed differently. It has always been impossible to establish a station at the NP because the ice shifts around a great deal. There are floating stations that pass over it and near it. It’s located in the ARCTIC OCEAN.

A year ago, there was scientific speculation that the North Pole (not the whole of the Arctic) melted out by the end of summer – that the sea ice might retreat in that location to leave the area ice free for days rather than hours.

That didn’t happen. But polyanas opened up sporadically around the North Pole. Nothing unusual there.

You can make a new point about that, if you like, or hit back with any other deflection, even mention Gore, thereby invoking a variant of Godwin’s law.

But get this straight – the premise for all the above cheering and jeering is a straw man. Open water happens occasionally at the North Pole, allowing subs to surface, but its always surrounded by sea ice. Most often they have to break through the ice or push it aside. It’s never (since the last glacial maximum) been ice free from MELTING, only from ice movement, and only briefly. And the mid-20th century military expiditions are well-known by the climate scientists studying sea ice patterns up there.

Two year’s data, whether consecutive or far apart, does not make a climate trend. Period.

“If it is accepted that our planet Earth has evolved over millions of years through ice ages and hot periods, why does man, whose existance here is minuscule, have the right to designate the “correct” climate for planet Earth. It has obviously and factually changed drasticaly through time, what gives us the right to select the “proper” climate?”

There is no ‘proper’ climate. All we know is we have flourished in a stable climate. The concern is not that climate will change. We know it will in the long run. We’re concerned with how fast we might be changing the climate now, if that will be bad for us, and if we shouldn’t change our behaviour.

We might ask if damning a river is a good idea. Some people downstream might take exception to their creek drying up. We answer that we’re ‘managing resources’, and then we sell them the water they used to get for free.

Or how about a company polluting the river? Do we have any right to codify what is “good” water in that case?

It’s not like taking responsibility for the environment and resources is a new concept.

please help saving our precious earth just by switching of the A.C when not in the room you think u can do that or are to lazy. people please read and follow and tell other people to do the same and you will see the improvement.If you care about our world please tell other people to try to follow

Fools. Nuclear Subs are tracked by their hot water released from the nuclear reactor. Hot water rises. A nuke sitting in ice that it broke will melt the ice as it sits there. Notice that the water is around the the subs. The subs are not in open water, but nuke reactor melted pools. Duh. You do know that nuclear reactors have back up cooling systems because they operate at 600 degrees plus. Duh.

REPLY: Bob, unless you are “being facetious”, as another commenter put it, you raised a point worth considering, so I looked to find an answer. A fellow employee happened to have several tours in a nuclear sub under his belt as a weapons officer and I asked him about the waste heat issue in this context.

He said it was negligible. I asked about older sub designs from the Skate era and he said they also had no detectable heat signature.

He said designers go to great lengths in sub design not to allow waste heat from the closed nuclear steam system into the water, since it would in fact become a signature that could be tracked. He also said that the NAVY had developed several test systems, trying to track waste heat as a way to track subs, and also to fine tune their own designs. He said that the systems were not successful in those tests.

Given that the premise of any submarine is stealth, the idea of allowing a big heat signature to escape into the surrounding water for an enemy to follow like a trail of bread crumbs seem highly unlikely.

The fact that the NAVY tried and failed to build such a detection system that actually functioned for that purpose seems to disprove the idea of significant wast heat. – Anthony

Robert… I sure HOPE he’s being facetious! The bottom pic shows exactly what he’s talking about… a pool of sub-warmed water around the sub, but several of those pics show subs on the surface in open ocean. Which is the point of the story… that Arctic ice is extremely variable.

Al Gore is a politician, not a scientist. Do any of you even know a scientist? If you are intelligent enough to be a skeptic, do the rest of us a favor and get smarter – DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Scientists make mistakes, but the beauty of the scientific method is that you can always get more data, BUT YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ALL THE DATA. One must act on what one knows when there is a call for action. “Climate change” cannot possibly be “man-made”. However, only an idiot can deny that man irrevocably changes his environment. Ask yourself the question, “Do I consciously leave a positive change as my legacy to my children, or do I ignorantly leave a depleted and barren world to the rats and cockroaches?”

The 1st photo labeled “Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959. Image from NAVSOURCE” is not a photo of that historical surfacing … although the 2nd photo may be. The source “NAVSOURCE” does have that photo (online) and implies it is the historic 1st surfacing at the North Pole.
I just read “Surface at the Pole” by Vice ADM. James Calvert, USN… the captain of the Skate during her 1st two missions (the surfacing in question & the maiden voyage of the sub to the Pole the previous summer).
According to Captain Calvert the surfacing was in an ice-covered lead (as all these cracks in arctic ice tend to be in the winter). The lead was much to narrow for them to surface the previous summer but with the addition of a remote control TV (to view the surface) and armament (to allow the sub to break ice without damaging its periscope, radio equipment, etc.) it was possible. The problem is ice flows move and having one crash into the rudder or propeller would be disaster. But in the winter when they broke through the thin ice (it takes about a day to form 6 inches of ice over a new lead in the winter) the thin ice would hold them fast causing them to drift with the ice eliminating the possibility of having an ice flow (or worse the larger hummock often at the edge of a flow) damage the sub. There was no clear water around the sub during any wintertime surfacing. The previous summer they surfaced in the much larger melt lakes called polynyas. That is what the 1st photo looks like.
I also disagree with the posting indicating the sub’s nuclear reactor melted ice around the sub. Subs may be tracked via tempature but that amount of heat is not allowed to escape. The water exposed to the reactor is in a closed loop (it is radioactive). It is brought into close proximity to the loop used to create the steam that ultimately drives the ship. That water is also recycled (the desire is to start with hot water when making steam).
The crew held a service at the pole and distributed the ashes of artic explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins in the “26-below-zero cold” (F). (The average winter temp is supposed to be –30F and the coldest the crew reported at any surfacing was –50F).
About 30 of the crew walked out on the ice for this ceremony. There was no “open water” around the sub. According to Captain Calvert the polynyas of the summer did not exist that far north. The mission was to search for “sky lights” … thin ice formed in leads and then surface. This trick had been learned from beluga whales that would break through 6-8 inch thick ice in leads to get air.
As far as finding open water at the pole itself I agree with posters that point out the flows will have breaks in them and eventually there will be open water (in the summer) and thin ice (in the winter). In the summer the Skate was unable to surface at the pole. That winter they circled around for “several hours” before a lead appeared. That was no sure thing … but ice travels about 2.5 miles/day at the pole so they were hopeful and lucky.

–this is my 1st posting so I hope it does not come across as negative
–this is by-far the best site on GW issues

Gary Crough, you wrote about the Wilkins ceremony at the North Pole, which was discussed at the Guardian-Monboit thread: “How to disprove Booker in 26 seconds”
Here is an abbreviated copy of post that I made over there
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Onthefence, as indicated earlier, there are a number of things about the photograph that you posted commemorating the scattering of Wilkins’s ashes that I find puzzling… …let’s firstly look solely at CONTRAST in photography, that is relevant to your post.

The first thing that struck me about your photo, was the excessive contrast. (on my 78 cm widescreen high quality TV monitor).
This gives a very forbidding or grim view on the scene, that I, (being a past enthusiast hobbyist with B & W photography), did not believe to be uhm “genuine“. Of course, it is only partially possible to recover any “errors” in “correction” of contrast without the original, but working backwards from a probably corrupt version, I’ve improved the original HEREWITH, (using basic Nero), and have red-highlighted some points to follow:

If you then look at the separately contrast enhanced images of the two individuals highlighted, let me say firstly of (1) that this person, despite the heavy clothing appears to have a bust-line, and, if , depending on the quality of your monitor, and if you zoom out to maybe 200% or more, and even squint if necessary, this person appears to be female. Additionally the height of this individual is typically female WRT to the others that are probably male

WRT individual 2, although the very low light behind the conning tower does not enable the outline of a bust to be detected, the hairstyle does not appear to be according to military practice with males. Again, if you zoom as necessary depending on your monitor, what can be made of the face, perhaps aided by squinting, suggests that this individual is female. Additionally, the said person has a stature typically female compared with those adjacent.

Also, 3, might be female.
I would be a bit surprised if a nuclear submarine back in 1959 had a crew including 2, maybe 3 or more females!

I repeat that depending on your monitor, (which should be of good quality) you need to zoom out A/R

More to come on some other issues.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
However, the thread has been terminated for no apparent reason

Bob_FJ There were no females on the Skate during either of the 1st two deployments (both to North Pole … 2nd in March). The entire crew ( ~ 90 and 11 scientists/technicians) is listed in the book. They are all male.
The photo you provide is in the book (listed as an official USN photo). This is winter (March) so there was not a lot of sunlight. The caption in the book says”by the lurid light of red flares” … maybe that is meaningful to photo experts.

There are very likely civilians in the photo as they were a key part of the “crew”. They included arctic experts and Wado Lyon (the WW2 expert on sub detection who was also the inventor of the “ice detector” used to measure ice thickness above the sub).

BTW: I expect the photo you reference is authentic.
I also think the 1st photo on this thread is authentic. NAVSOURCE (not a part of the Navy) incorrectly (in my opinion) implies it is the original surfacing at the North Pole. In the arctic winter seawater (at 28 F) will start to freeze in seconds when exposed to -30 F air. For that reason “open water” does not persist at the North Pole in the winter.

“…The entire crew ( ~ 90 and 11 scientists/technicians) [of the Skate in 1959] is listed in the book… …The photo you provide is in the book (listed as an official USN photo). This is winter (March) so there was not a lot of sunlight. The caption in the book says” by the lurid light of red flares” …”
Well actually, the image I provided was an IMPROVED version, where excessive contrast is ameliorated as far as is capable from the original possibly corrupt very forbidding Byrd image. (See below)

I don’t want to sound like a lecturer, but a feature of diffused lighting such as in twilight is that shadows are much softened or are absent. Conversely, in bright unfiltered sunshine, there is little diffusion and shadows tend to be problematic photographically, and a common technique to overcome this problem, is to use flash illumination, to fill-in foreground subjects that may be shaded, despite that it is a bright sunny day. This is seldom necessary on an overcast day, where the light is less, but much more diffuse. What is more, twilight in polar regions is typically even more diffuse, (for various reasons), and more prolonged than at lower latitudes.

I can explain later that it appears that a high quality camera was used, yet out of some 101 people aboard the sub, it seems that no one knew how to take a twilight photo!
If you examine the image above, the people on the left are seemingly silhouetted and rather overexposed to diffused light from their rear. (they do not cast shadows). However, those on the right, on this side of the conning tower, are seemingly badly underexposed! This simply does NOT make sense! If there was apparent shade to port of the conning tower, why did they not simply walk around the starboard side where it was brighter?
OK, you refer to flares being used to illuminate the scene. So where are they? Surely they would not be on the starboard side. The only sensible location would be behind the field of view of the camera, and since the conning tower is a mid grey in colour, it should be well brightened, but it is not. Additionally the light from flares (or flash) is NOT diffused, (except in fog), and should cast shadows behind the foreground people. So where are the shadows? Do you seriously believe that they would not have with them photographic flash if there was any suspicion that it might be dark there, momentarily before the equinox!

There are yet other points that strongly suggest that this image is a commemorative RECONSTRUCTION, but meanwhile let’s return to my analysis that two or more of the people in the commemorative image are women.

Bob_FJ, I have no expertise in photo reconstruction and am not going to get into that. I just met the photos were of the same subject not that they are identical.
The civilians aboard were: Craamer Bacque, Waldo Lyon, Robert Merton, Zane Sandusky, W Schatzburg, David Scull, Robert Wadell and Walter Whitman. All others were Navy officers and enlisted … including James Hester (quoted in the original piece … below 2nd photo).
At that time females were not part of any USN ship’s crew. Given the book’s account and normal logic I would say: there were no females at the service.
The ship’s official photographer was Lt. Bruce Meader but the book does not state that he took that photo. Back then an official photographer would have some training but might not be considered an expert by today’s standards.
A note on taking photos at the pole … the captain took off his mittens to take a photo at an early surfacing and got frostbite in the “-20 F air”. Also the camera equipment for the official photographer froze up at the 1st surfacing (they did something to prevent that in the future … just covering the camera body I assume).
The person just below the “7” should be Captain Calvert since the caption says “the author reads a memorial service for Sir Hubert Wilkins”. He is 6′ 2″ (that’s what he says when talking about stooping slightly to move down the passages of the sub”).
The photo in question was the only photo in the book listed as “U.S. Navy, Official”. Others were by the Captain or from Naval records but not listed as “Official”. That may imply the photo was taken by Lt. Meader … I don’t know.
The book says a there was a “wind (about 30 knots)” … “about 30 of the crew formed ranks on either side of the table in 26-below-zero cold” … we were on the port side of the Skate and as much to its lee as possible … it was to difficult to read without some light so men held red flares on both sides of the alterlike table”. I had forgotten that detail but retrieved the book to answer your questions. “The remainder of the crew lined up on the deck of the Skate and a rifle squad formed at the bow.” I don’t think they ever leave an active ship without a duty squad aboard but it sounds like most of the crew was outside for the service. (85-90 people including civilians I would guess)
Lt. David Boyd is likely a figure next to the captain since he was the one that took the urn and “sprinkled the ashes to the wind”. (I assume the alter (table) is in the immediate foreground of the photo — had to be close enough so the red flares would have provided light for reading?)

The ship’s official photographer was Lt. Bruce Meader but the book does not state that he took that photo. Back then an official photographer would have some training but might not be considered an expert by today’s standards.

Not sure how things were back then, but my son-in-law is the “official photographer for the Destroyer he’s on. He was given that position because he had a camera and was willing to do it. That’s it.

A sub would normally not have any more “official photographer” than your son but this was a research mission and they took apparently took along some fancy equipment … including a movie camera. My guess is Lt. Meader was NOT a full-time photographer but did have some training. Apparently Lt. Meader had a lot of camera equipment … the book mentions him lugging it down while attempting to keep from banging it into the sub. Between deployments men were sent to school for training … given the nature of this mission having a trained photographer would have been a higher priority than normal. But this is pure speculation on my part.

Taking some of your points from the top
“…The person just below the “7? should be Captain Calvert since the caption says “the author reads a memorial service for Sir Hubert Wilkins”. He is 6′ 2? (that’s what he says when talking about stooping slightly to move down the passages of the sub”)…”

I had noted that the reader appears to have a tall torso, however, the “table or alter” in front of him seemingly shields view of his feet, but I get your point about the relative stature of individuals 1 and 2, if the reader in this image is indeed Calvert. (I still think 1 and 2 are female). I might optimise the image contrast on the reader, and take another look.

“…The book says a there was a “wind (about 30 knots)” [~35 mph/56 kmh]… … we were on the port side of the Skate and as much to its lee as possible …”

Well, shelter from any wind of some of the celebrants is a good reason for some of them to be on the relatively dark port side of the conning tower, but as mentioned earlier, the light would be very diffuse, and various methods of contrast adjustment are available. I believe the published image is either incompetent, or, the contrast has been deliberately exaggerated to make it look like a grim scene, or it is a grim reconstruction.
Incidentally several individuals appear to be wearing relatively light gloves, and the reader might be bare left handed. One appears to be bare headed, and another maybe or lightly so.

“…about 30 of the crew formed ranks on either side of the table in 26-below-zero cold”…”

However, only ten such people are deployed in the image.

“…it was to difficult to read without some light so men held red flares on both sides of the alterlike table”…”

There is no evidence of this in the image, including no shadows behind the celebrants, and no apparent brightening of the mid-grey conning tower.

“The remainder of the crew lined up on the deck of the Skate and a rifle squad formed at the bow.” I don’t think they ever leave an active ship without a duty squad aboard but it sounds like most of the crew was outside for the service. (85-90 people including civilians I would guess)

However, where is the deck in this image? In this image, Skate has not actually surfaced, with apparently only the conning tower having punched through the ice. The deck would be beneath 1 or 2 feet of ice! Why is there no one near the front of the conning tower? Three individuals are seen way to starboard of the vessel on the ice, fully exposed to alleged wind, and do not appear to be hooded.

There some other things about this image that are rather strange, but maybe this is enough for now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In an earlier post, you wrote in part:
“…In the arctic winter seawater (at 28 F) will start to freeze in seconds when exposed to -30 F air. For that reason “open water” does not persist at the North Pole in the winter…”

I think, (as a professional engineer), that this is an exaggeration. Water is a good conductor of heat, (from below to the surface), and has been shown to be rather dynamic up there!
Have you followed the antics of the Catlin Expedition, and Pen Haddow’s earlier adventure? The latest trip suffered several problems including that on some days they made negative progress because inconveniently, the ice that they were trekking on was moving more rapidly towards their rear. (and they only got part-way to their destination; the NP)

Bob_FJ: I made up the part about “seconds”. In the trip the previous summer the captain used the periscope to survey a melt lake prior to completing a surface but the periscope proved useless in the winter. When they broke through the ice and then raised the periscope they could see nothing. A water film had frozen and made the periscope useless for wintertime use above water. That happens in seconds; instantly as far as the Captain could tell. Also, according to famous arctic explorer Vilohjalmur Stefansson (who the Captain met at Dartmonth where he taught) “In still air and tempatures at 30 below, the sea water will freeze 6 inches the 1st day, four more the second day and so on. In a week you’d have a foot and a half or so.”
You mention the sub is not completely surfaced. Normally the deck would be several feet above the ice (over 6 feet). In this case it looks to me that the deck is a foot or two above the ice … you can see a bit of the deck to the left of the tower. Thicker ice (and this was apparently the thickest they surfaced in) did not fall away from the sub but remained in slabs against the sub. The deck being only 2-3 feet above the ice would be consistent with the account in the book. If the deck is not above water no one is going to be leaving the sub.
As for the Catlin adventure … I think it is misguided. Clearly much more than they hoped to learn (and they learned only a fraction of what they hoped) could be obtained via any sub in a fraction of the time. In addition, more detailed information on ice thickness was obtained via a scientific fly-over that took place before the Catlin adventure ended.
At the time of the Skate adventure the “ice machine” (a modified version of the tool used by subs to record depth could detect “thin and thick ice” but to an accuracy of only a couple of feet … my bet is current subs can make measurements within inches??

In the National Geographic article, the torch in on individual’s hand (to the left as you look at the picture) is quite clear and very red.

Also, there are two other pictures from the ceremony. Both of them are in color and the lighting is better.

Comdr. Calvert did mention that they were in a storm. Since, as far as I can tell, he’d never been in a storm at the Pole before, he may have attributed less to the storm than correct. If you look at the NOAA artic picture for May 17th or so, they were having a storm then. Looked pretty dark and yet it was well after sunrise.

P.S. to Bob_FJ, the National Geographic article shows personnel in the tower (I think it’s called the “sail” but I’m no submariner, that seems to be what Comdr. Calvert is referring to), as well as all the way down to the ice. The personnel are putting up flags of the US, GB and Australia if I remember correctly, for the service. The picture is also in color. It may have been taken from the other side versus the side the ceremony was held on. The sub seems to be about as far “surfaced” as in any other picture we’ve seen.

Gary Crough, thanks for the link to the book! If it’s as good as the National Geographic article, it must be a gem.

Bottom line is, air temps -26 to -30 [F], March 17-25, 1959. Water temp 30 ABOVE [F]. Catlin expedition encountered air temp of -40 [F] in 2009. That twit that took a swim in July 2007 did so in 29 above [F] water.

If water and air temps are the same, the differences have to be winds and currents, not global warming. Comdr. Calvert’s data must be referenced in the future any time we get the “ice free north pole” drivel.

DA. Freiberg: Thanks for the input … especially reference to a color photo. You are right about the flags. Sir Wilkins was born in Australia, did his famous feats (fly over Pole etc.) for GB and made his final home in the US.

Some final comments on conditions: This was the most difficult surfacing they did due to the small size of the lead and the thickness of the ice. Once outside Walt Whitman (arctic expert aboard) warned that they should not linger. The ice appeared to be on the move. (a big danger was having a lead close and capture the sub). So they did the ceremony … placed an American flag at the pole … and left.

Now back to the topic of this site: GW. The flag and the note left in a waterproof container are expected to end up on the shores of Greenland. That’s where the currents carried the ship Jeannette. The arctic ocean currents carry things southeast from the pole at 2-3 miles/day. What this implies to me is there is 2nd-year ice and maybe some 3rd year ice but not much older than that. All the arctic ice is on the move and will eventually leave the arctic and melt?

In the previous trip (summer) the Skate visited Alfa (a research station placed on an ice flow which was drifting with the currents. Alfa was about 300 miles southwest of the pole and how the Skate located this moving target is an interesting story.

Alfa was established in April 1957 “about 550 miles north of Barrow Alaska”. By August 1958 it was 900 miles NE of Barrow. The ice was to thin and weak to land planes in the summer so the sub was the only visitors the research team had seen in months. (They got mail & supplies via air drop) The flow was selected with hopes it would drift to the pole but that was not going to happen. In 2-3 years that flow was expected to reach Greenland … as does the ice at the pole itself.

Because of these currents it seems to me that the importance of “multi-year ice” is overstated. The arctic ocean is a big ice machine with water flowing in from the N Pacific, freezing and then melting as it moves to the N Atlantic. There are a couple of circular currents that may delay some ice but ice older than 3-4 years is rare??? Is that true? Anyway, once the ice reaches S Greenland in the summer it does not matter how old it is … it is going to melt.

If you still have your NatGeo CD, would you see if you can find the July 1940 issue and skim through the article by Robert Bartlett on Greenland since 1898 and see if it is worth reading. I can’t find a copy locally and am not sure I want to spend the money to purchase it online. Can you read the articles on that CD without printing them out or is the technology so old that it doesn’t work on modern computers? If it’s a long article and is expensive to print, don’t go to any trouble–I just thought it might be interesting. Bartlett had a very long history of arctic exploration.

Gary Crough (05:51:41) : DA. Freiberg (07:40:58) & (07:57:25) :
Very interesting, and thanks!
I will try with considerable interest, when I have time, to dig-up the National Geographic article with its “better” photos etc…. my word, what a strange and interesting affair!

According to that great purveyor of truth; Onthefence, at the Guardian:
“…Ohio State University Libraries Exhibitions, [is] part of the Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program. This archive collects material about Sir George Hubert Wilkins…”
It thus seems very strange that National Geographic has a better photographic record than the said devoted archive! Oh well, whatever is behind all this, it seems that I was correct in suggesting that the OSU-Byrd archival B & W photo of the ceremony, first posted by Onthefence at the Guardian, is, in a word; crap. (please advise if you disagree)

There are several things in our exchanges here that I still have problems with, and a simple example is that I do not believe it to be practical for the crew to assemble in numbers on the deck, covered in ice. (no such crew being visible in the ceremonial image, and the sensible {safest?} place might be near the conning tower, within camera view!)

Despite all this confusion, I think it has been well demonstrated that polar sea ice in the Arctic, and newly OPENING leads are very dynamic. Furthermore, maybe our recent very multi-faceted discussions are getting us bogged-down. What‘s more, the same sort of message as launched by Anthony’s lead post (especially in the first image) can also be seen, and arguably more dramatically in the 18 May 1987 rendezvous of three submarines at the NP. (See lead photo above).
Ah; but it was not at the peak of winter freeze right? True, but take a look at the following graphic, and it shows that mid May is characteristically not much different to mid March in terms of ice levels!

So, the alarmist claim is that in recent years, there has been a dramatic acceleration in melt of sea-ice around the Arctic/NP. Well what about the conning tower break-through of the USS Charlotte through not 1 or 2 feet of ice, or water, as previously, but ~5 feet of ice in 2005”, Here follows some discussion, with links to the text and the photo:

In recent years, journeys to the North Pole by air (landing by helicopter or on a runway prepared on the ice) or by icebreaker have become relatively routine, and are even available to small groups of tourists through adventure holiday companies.
In 2005, the United States Navy submarine USS Charlotte (SSN-766) surfaced through 155 cm (61 inches) of ice at the North Pole and spent 18 hours there.[21]
Text: http://www.answers.com/topic/north-pole
Photo: http://wpcontent.answers.com/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Chralotte_Northpole.jpg/220px-
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Incidentally, in checking the Boyd-Wilkins archive, I found this STARBOARD view:
USS Skate surfacing at the North Pole, March 17, 1959. Wilkins 35-5-1.
HMM! WRPT various other comments!!!!!

Gary Crough (05:51:41), I did not have time before this to comment on your:

“…As for the Catlin adventure … I think it is misguided. Clearly much more than they hoped to learn (and they learned only a fraction of what they hoped) could be obtained via any sub in a fraction of the time. In addition, more detailed information on ice thickness was obtained via a scientific fly-over that took place before the Catlin adventure ended…”

I agree, but also putting aside that it is impossible to measure change without some comparative datum, what really irritates me about the whole adventure, is that despite his previous “accident prone” polar screw-up, Haddow et al somehow managed to convince some gullible people to cough-up a great chunk of money to fund it!!!!!
Ludicrous!

“…If water and air temps are the same, the differences have to be winds and currents, not global warming. Comdr. Calvert’s data must be referenced in the future any time we get the “ice free north pole” drivel.”

Gary Crough (10:25:23) , you also wrote in part:

“…Because of these currents it seems to me that the importance of “multi-year ice” is overstated. The arctic ocean is a big ice machine with water flowing in from the N Pacific, freezing and then melting as it moves to the N Atlantic. There are a couple of circular currents that may delay some ice but ice older than 3-4 years is rare??? Is that true? Anyway, once the ice reaches S Greenland in the summer it does not matter how old it is … it is going to melt.”

Concerning the so-called record melts in 2007 & 2008, here is an extract from a NASA – JPL study, that we don’t hear a lot about at NSIDC or from the usual alarmists:

“…Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters…”http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html

I was drafting an anti cap-and-trade letter to my Congressman and was going to include that 1st sub photo. So I thought I would verify it was legit; It is posted with a misleading label on NAVSOURCE but I could not find any other source. Then I stumbled on “Surface at the Pole” and got a copy. That book made it clear Skate never surfaced in open water at the pole in the winter. Bad news for deniers.

But it also made it clear that arctic ice is in constant motion and the idea of using it as a proxy for global temp is a stretch. At any given specific point a given ice flow will linger only a few days. So if you measured the depth of ice at the pole one day and came back in a week chances are you would be sampling a different ice flow … one that may have taken a very different path to get to the pole … so it could be thicker or thinner based on how long it had lingered in the arctic. And if you were lucky (like the Skate) you may even find fresh (thin) ice formed over a lead. Until that sunk in I thought the Navy studies were silly.

The Navy takes ice thickness readings with its subs and produces average arctic ice thickness data. The readings are almost continuous during a given trip (and apparently accurate within a centimeter) but each sub takes a totally different route so how can you compare month-to-month or year-to-year with the Navy data. You can’t. Nor does it matter since a given ice flow does not linger anywhere for a month much less a year. So the Navy approach actually makes sense?? They cover a huge area taking lots of samples and simply conclude the average ice thickness in the arctic circle is X. They have been doing that for years.

More bad news for alarmists: As late as 2007 the Nave thought arctic ice was decreasing in thickness.

But I recall reading a comment from a Navy officer stating (just prior to the Catlin trip) that arctic ice had been growing over a centimeter a year for the past couple years. That comment struck me because the Navy seemed to know what the Catlin team wanted to find out??? Problem is I have been unable to relocate that statement. Does anyone recall a such a statement? I believe it was an answer to a question of what the Catlin group could expect to find.

Before posting these old news to claim that thin ice is usual in the arctic, you must READ these news. If you have did so, you would have find this:

” The Ice at the polar ice cap is an AVERAGE of 6-8 feet thick, but with the wind and tides the ice will crack and open into large polynyas (areas of open water), these areas will refreeze over with thin ice.”

That obviously mean that ice in 1958-59 was thick (2-3 meters), and these were only HOLES made by wind and tides.

By contrast, ice in last year hit an AVERAGE of 2 m (6 feet) in winter and less than 1m (3 feet) in summer. That means that between 1980 and 2007 ( in 2008-2009 the numbers are probably worse) , combining thickness and area data, the arctic loss approximately 30-40% of winter ice volume and 70 % of summer ice volume.

I also want to make a comment on some of the comments on this blog: Of course, isolated evidence is only anecdotal evidence. If there is enough of it though, it’s no isolated any more and therefore, not anecdotal. The accusation of “cherry-picking” is void. That’s how reversals of evidence begin, with tiny attempts by opposing parties to choose between two or more hypotheses. It’s been like this since before Aristotle. It seems to me that globalwarmists have lost track of the simple idea of competing hypotheses. I don’t really expect them to change their minds. I only hope such evidence as the sub pictures will introduce a doubt about dogma in the minds of the many people who are honestly undecided. I have hope because I know many of these.